Andrew Briggs, Professor of Health Economics and Co-Director of the Global Health Economics Centre (GHECO) at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) has won the 2024 Office of Health Economics (OHE) Innovation Policy Prize.
Sharing the honour with Thomas Pogge, Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University, the winners received their prize at a ceremony in London earlier this week (Tuesday 28 January 2025) where they presented their submitted proposals, followed by a reception.
Professor Briggs was awarded the prize for his submission ‘From Delaware to California: A Road Map for Incentivising Environmentally Sustainable Innovation’. The proposal was based on a three-pronged approach to incentivising innovation in the life sciences sector:
- To move from an ex-post to ex-ante incorporation of environmental externalities
- To use a more inclusive definition of the social cost of carbon in valuing externalities
- The use of a fund that is based on health improvements generated by new products in a given jurisdiction. The fund can then be split to support the life science industry in that jurisdiction and health generation at a global level for those countries that have investment levels below the global median.
The 2024 Innovation Policy Prize awarded a total of £40,000 that will be split between the winners. Focused on climate change and health, the OHE asked applicants for the award to address how economic policies can incentivise environmentally sustainable innovation in the life sciences sector.
Andrew Briggs, Professor of Health Economics at LSHTM, said: “I am delighted and honoured to receive this this award. More than ever, the questions and problems within healthcare are linked to the climate crisis and it is critical that we find solutions that recognise the contribution of the health care sector, while creating a level playing field across all sectors of the economy.”
Professor Briggs is a leading expert in health economic evaluation, whose work has a particular focus on statistical methods for cost-effectiveness analysis in healthcare economics. In recent years, he has broadened his research scope to include environmental economic evaluation, which integrates health co-benefits into analyses of environmental policies and interventions.
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