OHE Thanks Trustees for Their Service

As a Charity, OHE is governed by a Board of Trustees which today is comprised of a mixture of academic and industry experts. OHE has been privileged to have many leading health economists serving on its Boards and Committees over the nearly 60 years of its existence.

Two giants in the academic field are stepping down from the OHE Board of Trustees at the end of 2021, Professor Mike Drummond and Professor Bengt Jonnson, after more than a decade of service.

Both have contributed a combination of management acumen – having run their respective university departments and consulting businesses – and of research oversight as leading thinkers and contributors in the field. Notably, both have been awarded the prestigious Avedis Donabedian Award in recognition of lifetime achievement in the area of improving health outcomes.

Mike Drummond took over from Professor Tony Culyer as Chair of the OHE Policy Committee in 2011, became Chair of the Management Committee in 2014 and most recently became Chair of Trustees when OHE became a charity (a not-for-profit) in 2016. Mike is Professor of Health Economics at the University of York and was Director of the Centre for Health Economics for ten years. He is the author of two major textbooks on health economics and more than 700 scientific papers. He has been President of both the International Society of Technology Assessment in Health Care (now HTAi), and the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR). He is currently Co-Editor-in-Chief of Value in Health. In 2010, he was made a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies in the USA, and he received the John Eisenberg Award, in 2012 in recognition of exemplary leadership in the practical application of medical decision-making research.

Bengt joined the OHE Policy Committee in 2007 and became a Trustee of OHE, like Mike, in 2016. Bengt is, like Mike, one of the true pioneers in the field – his 1976 doctoral thesis was on cost-benefit analysis in public health and medical care. He has since published hundreds of papers, reports, and book chapters worldwide. In 1979, Bengt founded the Swedish Institute for Health Economics (IHE), using the OHE as a model, and in 1982 became Professor of Health Economics at the University of Linköping, where he founded the Center for Medical Technology (CMT). IHE and CMT today are the focal institutions for health economics in Sweden. In 1991, Bengt moved to the Stockholm School of Economics, where is now Professor Emeritus and remains active, as ever.

OHE has been fortunate to have benefited from their support and wisdom over more than a decade and we are grateful for their service. Both Mike and Bengt intend to spend less time working, but anybody who knows them will be sceptical.

OHE is also saying goodbye to Louise Timlin who joined the Board in 2019. Lou is Senior Director in Global Patient Outcomes and Real-World Evidence at Eli Lily & Co. where she has had a distinguished 22-year career in a variety of Health Economics and Outcomes Research roles. Lou brought great management insight with a long track record of managing large teams, as well as deep strategic and technical insight in many of the topics in Health Economics and Outcomes Research and Health Technology Assessment in which OHE is highly active. Much of OHE’s work is global in nature, and Lou brought a wealth of experience in multi-country and global health economic issues. Lou is both passionate and knowledgeable about equality, diversity and inclusion and provided sound advice and challenge around these and many other topics. Her activity within ISPOR’s Women in HEOR was incredibly important and influential and resonated significantly with the OHE team. 

During a talk on the importance of role models for women and girls at ISPOR Barcelona, Lou shared a quote from Marian Wright Edelman “You can’t be what you can’t see.” Our team is 63% female and representation on both the executive and management levels of the organisation is 66%. Her activism has been an inspiration, and we hope that OHE can play a role in supporting a fairer and more equal community.

We wish Lou well in her next adventure and thank her for her service to OHE and to the wider health economics community.

OHE will be announcing our new Trustees in January as well as a new Chair.