Cost Effectivness Analysis in Health reviews issues and methods of assessing health care technologies and related programs. It emphasizes methods to perform economic evaluations, such as cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis; methods to assess efficacy, effectiveness, and safety of health care technologies; effectiveness research; and applications to clinical and public policy. The book provides in-depth discussion of the uses and conducting of cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs) as decision-making aids in public health, health services, and medicine. It explores cost-effectiveness in the context of societal decision making for resource allocation purposes. All methods presented in the book adhere to the recommendations forwarded by the Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine, which was convened by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1996. The book provides clear and detailed instruction in cost-effectiveness analysis and includes a review of those epidemiological and biostatistical skills relevant to conducting cost-effectiveness analyses. The book uses a worked example to carefully walk them through the process of designing and conducting an analysis, incorporating Internet-accessible data, and adhering closely to standards set for research in the field.    Because cost-effectiveness analysis is being used to evaluate medical interventions worldwide, Cost-Effectiveness Analysis in Health: A Practical Approach will focus on problems common to both developed and developing countries, namely, chronic diseases and infectious diseases. It also addresses issues specific to evaluating the cost-effectiveness of public health programs as well as problems specific to clinical medicine. For the person who also wants a theoretical background in cost-effectiveness, all of the journal articles needed to understand the analysis will be summarized in an appendix of this book. The book is clearly broken into theory and practice, making it work well for three disparate types of readers: (1) students of public health who have taken biostatistics and epidemiology and have a curriculum emphasizing them; (2) students of other disciplines (3) research practitioners who need a resources. Thus, theory is laid out before the applied practice. Chapters 11 and 12 are reference chapters, reiterating the epidemiological and biostatistical concepts that are relevant to CEA. Chapter 12 also covers how to find data to conduct CEA, and deals with finding and using correct data. Chapter topics include: Defining and explaining cost-effectiveness, principles of cost-effectiveness analysis, how to develop a research project, working with costs, probabilities and models, calculating life expectanc, working with health-related quality of life measures, calculating quality-adjusted life years, conducting a sensitivity analysis, preparing your study for publication, working with data, and finding the data you need. The book includes four appendices of tables from the National Center for Health Statistics and other sources.