Goldie and Summers Guests at Benefit-Cost Analysis Workshop

Sue J. Goldie delivered remarks as a special guest at the Methods and Case Studies workshop on benefit-cost analysis (BCA) in global health and development, held on November 2-3,2017 at Harvard’s Joseph B. Martin Center. Goldie is the faculty director of both the Global Health Education and Learning Incubator (GHELI) at Harvard University and the Center for Health Decision Science (CHDS) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The two-day workshop, an important milestone for the second phase of a project to develop reference case guidelines for benefit‐cost analyses, focused on the discussion of draft methods papers and case studies. The papers presented at the meeting—available in a novel, CHDS-curated resource pack—build on the initial scoping report, discuss the conceptual framework, review the relevant literature, and suggest analytic approaches that can be feasibly implemented. The project team welcomes comments and feedback through December 8, 2017.

After an intense day of dialogue and debate, Goldie spoke from a broader perspective about why, how, and in what ways benefit-cost analysis might prove to be a valuable tool for informing priorities in global health. She also reflected on the role of academia to foster literacy across disciplines to strengthen competency in the next generation of analysts: “If you do not speak the language, you cannot be part of the conversation.”

The workshop also included a spirited conversation between Larry Summers (President Emeritus, Harvard University) and Dean Jamison (Professor Emeritus of Global Health, University of California, San Francisco and University of Washington), about the role of benefit-cost analysis in global health and development. Previously, Summers and Jamison were the co-first authors of Global Health 2035, the report of the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health. Goldie also served as a commissioner during her tenure as then-director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, which provided collaborative support to the commission to underscore the value of investments in health.

CHDS faculty James K. Hammitt and Lisa A. Robinson are members of a leadership team for this project, together with Dean Jamison and David de Ferranti (Board Chair and Senior Advisory, Results for Development Institute). The project is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.