Promoting Evidence-based Health Care Policy in Spain: 6th Annual Workshop with EvaluAES

On the 10th of March 2017 EvaluAES held its 6th annual workshop on economic evaluation of health policies.

The promotion of evidence-based health care policy is a key challenge for many national health care systems.  Spain is addressing this challenge via a special interest group on the evaluation of health policies and health care services. This group is known as EvaluAES and is supported by the Spanish Health Economic Association (AES). EvaluAES is co-ordinated by OHE’s Patricia Cubi-Molla and Laura Vallejo-Torres (University College London).

EvaluAES seeks to disseminate research on the economics of health, and to establish collaborations and joint learnings across economists, public health specialists, health care providers and decision makers.

On the 10th of March 2017 EvaluAES held its 6th annual workshop. The workshop was hosted by the Andalusian School of Public Health in Granada (Spain).

The papers presented at the workshop covered a range of topics but all showcased research on the evaluation of health policies. Some examples included:

• “Evaluating the effects of restricted access to health care for the immigrant population: the Spanish case”
• “Does one euro makes a difference? Estimating pharmaceutical use changes of moving from coinsurance exemption to a capped and low intensity co-payment in a NHS”
• “What do choices for private health insurance reveal about the public system”
• “Restrictive vs Non-Restrictive drug reimbursement systems: evidence from the European countries”.

The workshop was attended by nearly 50 participants from a range of disciplines, including general practitioners, nurses, local government representatives, and academics and post-graduate students from economics, pharmacy and medicine. The quality of the research presented was high and there was considerable discussion and debate. The generation of evidence to support health care policies in Spain is well established, the next challenge for Spain, like many other countries, is the implementation of evidence-based policies.

For more information contact Patricia Cubi-Molla at OHE.