Professor Eddy van Doorslaer to Spend Six Months at CHERE

Professor Eddy van Doorslaer, a leading authority in international comparisons of equity in health and health care, will spend six months as a Visiting Professor at CHERE, commencing in August 2004.

Professor van Doorslaer is a PhD and a Professor of Health Economics at the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

“Eddy has chosen CHERE as the place to spend his study leave which is a great compliment to the Centre. We look forward to developing a number of collaborative projects during his stay,” said Professor Jane Hall, Director of CHERE. During his 6 months at CHERE, Professor van Doorslaer will be involved in ongoing CHERE research in the broad area of the distribution of health and health care in Australia.

Eddy is one of the project leaders of the so-called ECuity Project, an EU-funded series of research projects, currently in its 16th year, which considers how equity is defined and compares equity in health care across European countries. More information about this project can be found at: http://www2.eur.nl/bmg/ecuity//

He has also directed research projects on equity in health and health care for the OECD including Equity in Access, which applies the methods developed in the ECuity II project, measuring access to selected health care services. The final report from this study titled "Income-related Inequality in the Use of Medical Care in 21 OECD Countries" was released in May 2004.

As a result of these and other projects, Eddy has contributed to the development of the methodology for measuring inequalities and inequities in health, health care finance and delivery. These methods have now been used and elaborated upon by researchers from a number of other countries and by other international organisations interested in health system performance in terms of equity.

Currently, Eddy is also leading EQUITAP – an Equity in Asia-Pacific Health Systems study, aimed at understanding equity in health of developing countries. “In this project we have needed to go back to basics because it is not so much a question of equity in these countries but a question of access. We have also needed to revise some of our methodology due to variations in underlying assumptions. The study results will be discussed at a final meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka in March 2005 and presented at the iHEA meeting in Barcelona in July 2005.”

Eddy is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Health Economics and of the Journal of Health Services Research and Policy. He is one of the Programme Directors of a new MSc in Health Economics offered by the Erasmus University which started in September 2003. He has also acted as a health economics consultant to the World Bank, WHO and UNICEF.

Eddy obtained an MSc in Economics at the University of Antwerp (B), an MSc in Health Economics at the University of York (UK), and a PhD in Economics at the University of Maastricht (NL).

Professor van Doorslaer’s visit to CHERE is part of the Centre’s Visiting Scholars Program, established under the NHMRC Program Grant. In November 2004, Professor van Doorslaer will formally share his vast knowledge and experience with industry colleagues at a Distinguished Lecture, held at the UTS City campus, Haymarket.