Presentation

The 34th Health Economics Conference will take place from May 27th to May 30th 2014 in Pamplona. The theme of this year’s meeting is "Decision making based on evaluation: fable or desideratum?". Needless to say, the current economic situation is characterized by low economic growth, mild signs of future recovery, and public institutions’ struggle to meet budget constraints. Public health care expenditure will keep shrinking in the coming years. Accordingly, health policy should be consistently guided by economic evaluation to improve allocative efficiency. Public administration should make explicit its current decision making process and aim at increasing transparency and use of formal evaluation. Moreover, administrative data should be shared with researchers. The latter could then assist public administration evaluate budgetary and policy decisions.

The Asociación de Economía de la Salud (AES) aims to contribute to this discussion. The 2014 conference will feature panels and presentations on health policy evaluation. Some topics include the impact of pharmaceutical policy changes; the privatization of health services management; the obesity epidemic and the advocacy for healthy life styles; long term care and chronic illnesses; policies aimed at preventing smoking; the relationship between education, health and health care utilization; and, above all, the impact of education on health care decisions and costs. Many of these issues are closely related to the imbalance of health care budgets. The keynote lectures will discuss the behavioral economics and intertemporal dynamics of health status.

Both the organizing and scientific committees’ goal is to design a conference intellectually appealing and challenging to all its attendees. We hope that the lectures and discussion panels will live up to the tradition of previous conferences. We believe that the combined input of AES members and its multidisciplinary attendees will contribute to designing health care reform aimed at improving efficiency.

With these words, we would like to invite you to the 34th Health Economics Conference. We look forward meeting you all in charming Pamplona.

Organizing Committee and Scientific Committee