Anna Vassall
PhD
Professor
of Health Economics
I am a health economist with over thirty years of experience in economic analysis and research in low and middle income countries. I have extensive experience supporting national health planning and priority setting, aid effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness analysis in a wide range of low and middle income countries. I have directed and provided economic support to European Community and World Bank funded health sector reform and development projects in Yemen, East Timor, Syria and Sudan: supporting the development of health benefit package, national strategic plans and medium term expendtiure frameworks.
I sit in the Department of Global Health at LSHTM part-time, and am also the Executive Director of the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (AIGHD). I have led a wide range of influential economic analyses on HIV prevention for key populations (Avahan programme), the integration and organisation of HIV care and treatment services (Integra project), and new diagnostics for TB (Xpert MTB/RIF), the prevention of violence against women and girls (What Works) and programme of work on the economics of Covid. I have an interest in evidence informed priority setting, methods to incorporate health systems and other constraints into economic evaluation and priority setting. I am the module organiser for LSHTM's distance learning course in economic evaluation.
I was a member of the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for the WHO's Global TB Programme (STAG-TB) and currently of STAG- Infectious Hazards (IH).I was a lead investigator of the Global Health Costing Consortium; a Bill and Melinda Gates funded project to estimate and analyse HIV, TB and other health service costs globally. I am have worked with several countries to develop health benefit packages as part of the Disease Control Priorities (DCP) project and International Decision Support Initiatve (iDSI). I was awarded the Joep Lange Chair at the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health, University of Amsterdam in 2018.
Affiliations
Centres
Teaching
I am the module organiser for the economic evaluation distance learning course at LSHTM
Research
My research interests include: defining health benefit packages and priority setting; the economic evaluation of infectious disease interventions; costing global health interventions; and, the economics of the prevention of violence against woman and girls. I have developed methods for: the economic evaluation of intersectoral interventions; the inclusion of patient, community societal costs in economic evaluation; and, the economic evaluation of health systems interventions. I have a keen interest in 'real world' evaluation methods. I am also interested in health financing, in particular the role of development assistance for health, and fiscal space analyses.