Program

Nancy is Professor of Health Economics at the University of Melbourne and Senior Fellow at the Office of Health Economics, London. She is Chair of the Board of the EuroQol Research Foundation and served as President of ISPOR (2019-2020). Her principal areas of research expertise are the measurement and valuation of patient reported health outcomes; the cost effectiveness thresholds used in making judgments about value for money in health care; and priority setting in health care. She is currently leading a large programme of research to improve measurement and valuation of quality of life in children (QUOKKA), funded by the Medical Research Future Fund (Australia).  Nancy has published >150 original peer reviewed journal papers on a wide range of empirical and theoretical topics in health economics.

Jennifer L. Bright, MPA, is Executive Director of the Innovation and Value Initiative (IVI), an independent, nonprofit research organization focused on improving patient-centered methods and practice in value assessment. Ms. Bright is also President of Momentum Health Strategies, a consultancy offering expertise in health policy, advocacy and patient engagement, business strategy, and organizational development and leadership. Her prior experience includes executive leadership of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, policy director at Mental Health America, and policy and research roles in state government relations firms. Ms. Bright is Board Chair-Elect of Mental Health America and an editor for the American Journal of Accountable Care. She resides in Alexandria, Virginia, with her husband and three children, where she enjoys competitive rowing and serving as a city elections officer.

Dr. Carlson is an Associate Professor in the University of Washington Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research and Policy Program (PORPP) and an Affiliate Investigator in the Cancer Prevention Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Dr. Carlson's current research interests and work to date has primarily focused on the intersection of three areas: 1) genomics and emerging technologies in the field of personalized medicine; 2) uncertainty both in our decision-making processes and as the concept applies to the application of medical technologies in "real world" settings (i.e. outside of clinical trials) including comparative effectiveness research; and 3) economic and policy options to address these uncertainties as we seek to improve our health care system and the health of our population. Dr. Josh Carlson graduated with his PhD from the Institute for Public Health Genetics in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Washington in 2007 and received his MPH from the same department in 2004. Dr. Carlson conducted his postdoctoral training in pharmacoeconomics with the University of Washington from 2007-2009.

Richard Cookson is a professor at the Centre for Health Economics, University of York. He has helped pioneer “equity-informative” methods of policy analysis, including distributional cost-effectiveness analysis; health equity indicators for healthcare quality assurance; and methods for investigating public concern for reducing health inequality. He has co-chaired international working groups on equity, worked in the UK Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit and served on various NHS advisory committees.

Shelby D. Reed, PhD, is Professor in the Departments of Population Health Sciences and Medicine at Duke University’s School of Medicine.  She is the director of the Center for Informing Health Decisions at the Duke Clinical Research Institute.  She also is core faculty at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy and an affiliate member at the Duke Cancer Institute. Shelby has 25 years of experience in health economics, health preferences and health policy research, with more than 200 published manuscripts. Shelby has been an active member of ISPOR for over 20 years. She was the first recipient of ISPOR's Bernie O’Brien New Investigator Award in 2005.  She was elected to ISPOR’s Board of Directors in 2009. She served as President of ISPOR in 2017-2018 when she helped to establish ISPOR’s Women in HEOR Initiative. Most recently, she served as Chair of the Health Sciences Policy Council from 2019 to 2021.

Jason Shafrin, Ph.D. is a Senior Managing Director at FTI Consulting's Center for Healthcare Economics and Policy. Dr. Shafrin has over 15 years of health economics research experience serving as trusted advisor and expert to a wide variety of healthcare life sciences companies, governments, and non-governmental organizations.  Dr. Shafrin’s experience includes research on value assessment, alternative payment model design, discrete choice experiment surveys, real-world data analysis, and digital medicine.  His economics research has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals including BMJ Open, Health Affairs, Health Economics, Health Services Research, JAMA, PharmacoEconomics and Value in Health. In the popular media, his articles and thought leadership on critical issues in healthcare and economics have appeared in leading publications such as Forbes, Health Affairs blog, STAT News, U.S. News and World Report, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and others. Dr. Shafrin is also the founder and editor of the Healthcare Economist blog.  Prior to joining FTI Consulting, he served as a Vice President at PRECISIONheor and the Director of Research at the Innovation and Value Initiative (IVI).  Dr. Shafrin was also a Policy Lead at Acumen, LLC, where he helped the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services implement value-based purchasing programs for hospitals, physicians, and home health agencies. Dr. Shafrin received a Doctorate in Economics from the University of California, San Diego, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

Darius Lakdawalla is a widely published, award-winning researcher and a leading authority on health economics and health policy. He holds the Quintiles Chair in Pharmaceutical Development and Regulatory Innovation at the University of Southern California, where he sits on the faculties of the School of Pharmacy, the Sol Price School of Public Policy, and the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, one of the nation’s premier health policy research centers.

His research has focused primarily on the economics of risks to health, the value and determinants of medical innovation, the economics of health insurance markets, and the industrial organization of healthcare markets.  His work has appeared in leading peer-reviewed journals of economics, health policy, and medicine, including the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Health Affairs, the Journal of Health Economics, and the New England Journal of Medicine.  In addition, his work has been featured by prominent popular press outlets, such as the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, Forbes, and the New York Times.

Helen Knight is a Programme Director at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) responsible for the health technology assessment methods used to produce national guidance. With an academic background in biochemistry and health economics, she spent 6 years working as a health economist for a health outcomes consultancy before joining NICE in the Technology Appraisal Programme in 2007. She has extensive experience of health technology assessment over a wide range of technologies and disease areas. As Programme Director, she is responsible for the methods for developing and delivering of guidance within the Centre for Health Technology Evaluation. 

Steven D. Pearson, MD, MSc is the Founder and President of the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), an independent non-profit organization that evaluates the evidence on the value of medical tests, treatments, and delivery system innovations to encourage collaborative efforts to improve patient care and control costs.  Dr. Pearson is also a Lecturer in the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School.  

Previously, he has served as a Visiting Scientist in the Department of Bioethics at the NIH, a Special Advisor on Technology and Coverage Policy at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Vice Chair of the Medicare Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee (MedCAC).  His publications include over 150 peer-reviewed articles and commentaries on the role of evidence in the health care system, and the book No Margin, No Mission: Health Care Organizations and the Quest for Ethical Excellence, published by Oxford University Press.

Jessica Daw, PharmD, MBA currently serves as the vice president, Pharmacy at Optima Health and has over 15 years of managed care experience in multiple lines of business, including Commercial, Medicaid, Medicare, and Exchange. She has experience focusing in quality, medication therapy management, care management programs, formulary and utilization management, value-based contracting, physician risk sharing arrangements, compliance, and PBM oversight. Jessica is currently on the AMCP Board of Directors. She is also the co-chair of the North American Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Roundtable for ISPOR. Jessica earned her PharmD from Duquesne University and her Master of Business Administration from the University of Pittsburgh.

Frank-Ulrich Fricke PhD, MSc, health economist, is professor of health economics since 2009 and a member of the arbitration board for drug prices in the statutory health insurance in Germany (Schiedsstelle nach § 130b SGB V) since 2011. From March 2000 until June 2005 he was managing director of Fricke & Pirk GmbH. From July 2005 until August 2009 Frank-Ulrich was a full-time principal at IMS HEOR in Germany, which acquired Fricke & Pirk. Before starting Fricke & Pirk he had worked for several years in the pharmaceutical industry in health economics, pricing, and health policy.

Frank-Ulrich´s focus is on market access strategies, pricing, health policy and health economic evaluations (cost analysis, economic modeling, cost effectiveness analysis). He has experience in various therapeutic areas and diseases.