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Erik: What does it mean to build a career in health economics?
Clara: Health economics is a very broad field. Um. Some health economics look very much at
the narrow economic side of things that look at costs and benefits and look at quality
of life and those kinds of measures.
So, I’m interested at looking at the overall perspective and how economics as a social
science can help us determine how people take – how people look at specific scientific
and health care issues in a social environment. A lot of health care decision-making is not
black or white. It is not should I do this or should I do that? There are a lot of shades
of gray and economics as a social science can help fill in some of those question marks
and fill in some of the gray areas where we don’t know if two treatments are better
or worse than one or the other.
One may be better for one type of purpose and treatment B might be better for a second
type of person. And… There might be all sorts of alternatives that we are not even
looking at aside from the narrow “treat this.”
One of the things we have discovered is that the vast majority of health issues are caused
by what we term “social determinants of health”. So, poverty, education, lifestyle
– all these things that are not even included in the scientific field of health - those
can influence your health outcomes and how you do. And so economics helps us look at
those other social issues around, you know, “Are we getting the food support we need?
Are there grocery stores in our neighborhood that we can buy fresh fruits and vegetables
at?
You know that is not something you would ever come across in a hospital but those are the
things that social scientists look at that can really influence and make a huge difference
in whether or not you have healthy outcomes, live a long healthy live or are constantly
struggling with some of the chronic issues issues that come up.