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Global Health Priorities
Global Health Priorities

Research on Ethics, Economics, Policy

The interdisciplinary Global Health Priorities research group was dedicated to study the ethics and economics of priority setting in global health. It has been succeeded by the Bergen Centre for Ethics and Priority Setting, also at the Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Bergen.

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The group aimed to better understand ethical dilemmas, priority setting processes and fairness in resource allocation in low-, middle- and high-income countries. Key topics for Global Health Priorities included the ethics of decisions at a clinical and population level, local implications of global/national health policies, equity-efficiency trade-offs, and standard and extended health economic evaluations. The studies undertaken aimed at being relevant for researchers, health professionals, policy makers, and non-governmental institutions in Norway and globally.

Drawing on professional competences in medicine, economics, ethics and philosophy, political science, public health, epidemiology and statistics, the group contributed to research in a variety of academic fields and had a good joint production of scientific papers. The research output of the group has been published in top academic journals (e.g. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, Journal of Medical Ethics, BMJ, Pediatrics, The Lancet).

Members of the research group have been involved in developing policy reports in Norway and globally (e.g. on behalf of the World Health Organization), with a particular focus on priority setting issues in Ethiopia. The group's ongoing collaboration with central actors at the Ministry of Health, Addis Ababa University and key clinicians at a national level in Ethiopia will be continued by the Bergen Centre for Ethics and Priority Setting (BCEPS).