Symposium – 6 February 2014

In 2012 the South African government embarked on what is anticipated to be a 14-year implementation process for National Health Insurance (NHI) through the launch of a NHI pilot programme in ten districts. In anticipation of the further roll-out of NHI , Economic Research South Africa (ERSA) will host a symposium on 6 February to debate how we plan to achieve universal health coverage in South Africa. The discussion will cover various choices relating to coverage, benefits, governance, institutional frameworks and financing, including financing sources. International researchers Peter Smith and Eddy van Doorslaer and a number of prominent South African health researchers such as Jane Goudge, Jane Doherty and Alex van den Heever will contribute their analysis and perspectives.

The aim of the symposium is to deepen the discussion on the critical decisions around universal coverage so to inform and guide the public debate on the priorities in public health reform. Researchers and policy makers with an interest in this field are encouraged to attend. Should you be interested in attending, please inform Yoemna Mosaval at workshops@econrsa.org by the 20th of December. Please note that there are a limited number of travel grants for participants who do not live in the Cape Town area.

In addition, remaining presentation slots will be filled through a competitive process and we therefore inviting researchers in this field to submit abstracts around this theme. The submission date for abstracts is the 20th of December and abstracts should be submitted to Ronelle Burger at rburger@sun.ac.za.
Training workshop – 7 February 2014

Universal coverage requires ‘evidence-based’ decisions on which health care interventions and technologies should be included (or excluded) from the package of services offered. It is important to use empirical analysis to decide what kind of programmes are effective, for whom, in what circumstance and under what cost. Therefore, the symposium will be followed by a training workshop introducing participants to the basic tools of economic evaluations of health care technologies and health policies. The workshop will be led by Katharina Hauck and Ranjeeta Thomas from Imperial College. The first part of this course will focus on a theoretical and practical understanding of impact evaluation approaches along with careful review of resulting evidence. The second part will look at programme evaluation through cost-effectiveness analyses focussing on measuring and modelling outcomes and costs across interventions. To illustrate these tools and issues, they will refer to their recent experiences with the assessment of HIV/AIDS treatment in Khayelitsha.

The workshop is open to all interested symposium attendees (symposium attendees will receive priority). If you are interested in attending the training workshop, please inform Yoemna Mosaval at workshops@econrsa.org by the 20th of December.

In you communication with Ms Mosaval, please indicate specifically whether you want to attend only the symposium, only the training workshop, or both.