Overview
Katharina Hauck's current research focuses on the economics of infectious diseases, health system strengthening, priority setting and resource allocation.
The Economic Evaluation of HPTN071 (PopART)
The HPTN071 study is a six year international research project that evaluates whether a combination prevention strategy, including early anti-retroviral therapy (ART), can reduce the spread of HIV on population level. It is one of the largest HIV trials ever undertaken, led by a team of researchers from Universities and research institutions in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Zambia, and the United States. Katharina is responsible for the economic evaluation of HPTN071. Aim is to assess whether the initial cost of the prevention strategy will pay off in the long run, by reducing future treatment costs and most importantly, by preventing unnecessary human suffering.
Click to hear a podcast by Katharina on the economic evaluation of HPTN071
Click to visit the webpage of the economic evaluation of HPTN071
For information on HPTN071 visit the HIV Prevention Trials Network.
Health System Strengthening
Functioning health systems are crucial to translate effective public health and healthcare interventions into lives saved on the ground. Katharina is working on a number of projects that attempt to improve the performance of the health system, and to help policy makers assess the economic benefits and costs of investing in health systems. With colleagues from the International Decision Support Initiative, Katharina is working on ways to rigorously appraise the economic value of investments in health systems. Such investments are complex to evaluate because many public health and healthcare interventions may rely on the same complex system of human and capital infrastructure that delivers health care, sharing its costs and benefits.
Behavioural Economics and Infectious Diseases
The choices of individuals with respect to prevention of infectious disease, for example, the decision to get vaccinated or to use a condom, can affect the course of epidemics. Katharina works in a multidisciplinary team with colleagues from the Imperial College Business School, the London School of Economics, and Public Health England to understand the preventive choices that individuals make, how these choices may change transmission dynamics, and what interventions may change behaviour to socially optimal outcomes.
Impact evaluations of complex public health and healthcare interventions
Many interventions cannot be tested in a laboratory or a randomized trial. Katharina works on a number of studies that evaluate the impact of policy interventions with the use of quasi-randomized econometric methods, for example, regression discontinuity design, difference-in-difference analysis, and related techniques.
Guest Lectures
iDSI2 Research Groups Workshop. Presentation and working group member., International Decision Support Initiative., London, UK, 2018
Working Group on International Health Care Targets and WHO Guidelines. Member of working group., Center for Global Development, Washington, D.C., 2017
Medicine is a right: Delivering healthcare. Panelist on a panel discussion, Forum WebSummit 2017, Lisbon, Portugal, 2017
Longevity in the Developing World, Pint of Science, Australian High Commission, London, 2017
Determinants of A&E attendances in English hospital trusts: A Benchmarking Approach, City University London, London, 2017
Determinants of A&E attendances in English hospital trusts: A Benchmarking Approach, University of Exeter, Exeter, 2017
Supercomputing for Strategic Decision Making in Health, HPC at Imperial: The future of simulation, design, optimisation and prediction for the digital economy, Imperial College London, 2017
Raising Life Expectancy and Expectations. Panel Discussion, World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, 2017
IDENTIFYING ASSOCIATIONS WITH LIFE EXPECTANCY USING LARGE-SCALE DATA ANALYSIS, World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, 2017
Constraints of strategic decision making for health and health care, International Centre for Parliamentary Studies, London, 2016
Social Determinants of Health in Low-income countries, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, 2015
Obesity: Economics and Policy. Presentation at the Non-communicable Disease Forum, Institute for Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London, London, 2015
Public choice analysis of priority setting in health. Presentation at the roundtable meeting 'Political Economy of Priority Setting in Health', Center for Global Development, Washington, D.C., 2015
An Analysis of the Determinants of Life-expectancy using Extreme Bounds Analysis, Health Economics Research Centre, University of Oxford., Oxford, 2014
The Social Determinants of Health - Do the Data support the Rhetoric?, Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington., Seattle, 2014
Do hospitals react to financial incentives? The impact of Payment by Results on emergency cardiac treatment in English hospitals, School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), University of Sheffield, Sheffield (UK), 2012
The Economic Evaluation of the PopART trial, Centre for Health Economics, University of Hamburg., Hamburg, Germany, 2012
Do hospitals react to financial incentives? The impact of Payment by Results on emergency cardiac treatment in English hospitals, Centre for Health Economics, University of York, York (UK), 2011
Priority Setting in Health: The International Perspective, CHE, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, 2011
Analysing Adverse Events in Hospitals, School of Economics and Finance, University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia, 2010
The Relation between Adverse Events and Length of Stay in Hospital, Imperial College Business School, London, UK, 2010
The Resource Implications of Treating Obese Patients in Hospital, School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Australia, 2009
Research Student Supervision
Au,N, PhD in Economics: "The economic determinants and consequences of obesity"
Friebel,R, PhD in Health Economics: Patient Safety
Hansen,C, PhD in Health Economics: HIV/AIDS
Schaefer,R, PhD: HIV prevention among young women in eastern Zimbabwe
Singh,S, PhD Dissertation in Health Economics: Breastfeeding and Labour Force Participation