Health Economics and Policy Evaluation Group
Our strategy 2026-2031
The Health Economics and Policy Evaluation (HEPE) Group is based in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences (NDPCHS), University of Oxford. We bring together applied health economics, policy evaluation, and innovation to support better decisions in health and social care. Our work aims to ensure that evidence on costs, benefits, and wider impacts is used to improve population health and the sustainability of health and care systems.
Our vision
Our vision is to improve population health and wellbeing by supporting more efficient, equitable, and sustainable health and care systems. We aim to be a world-leading centre for applied health economics whose work is trusted by policymakers, practitioners, funders, and the public.
We believe that robust economic evidence is essential to making difficult and innovative decisions in health and social care. By combining methodological rigour with real-world relevance, we seek to inform decisions that affect patients, communities, and health systems both in the UK and globally.
What we do
The HEPE Group generates and applies economic evidence to support decision-making across the health and care system. Our work spans prevention, diagnosis, treatment, service delivery, and public health, and addresses questions of value, affordability, sustainability, and impact.
We work closely with clinicians, public health experts, and behavioural, data, and social scientists to integrate economic analysis into multidisciplinary research. This collaborative approach ensures that economic evidence is embedded within wider evaluations of effectiveness, safety, and acceptability.
Our strategic priorities
Over the period 2026–2031, our strategy focuses on three interconnected priorities:
• Providing leadership in economist-led research that addresses major health system challenges, including prevention, service delivery, digital health, global health, and emerging technologies such as genomics and artificial intelligence.
• Advancing methods in health economics, including economic evaluation, measurement and valuation of health, analysis of resource use and costs, and understanding how people and organisations make decisions.
• Strengthening engagement with policymakers, practitioners, patients, and the public, as well as international partners, to ensure that economic evidence is accessible, timely, and relevant to real-world decision-making.
Why health economics matters
Health and care systems are under increasing pressure from rising demand, constrained resources, workforce shortages, and rapid technological change. At the same time, there are significant opportunities to improve health and care through innovation in areas such as digital technologies, new models of service delivery, and advances in biomedical science. Ensuring the long-term sustainability of health and care systems, while making effective use of these opportunities, is a central challenge. Decisions about how to allocate limited resources remain unavoidable and often involve difficult trade-offs.
Health economics provides tools to assess these trade-offs in a transparent and systematic way. By examining costs alongside benefits and wider impacts, economic analysis helps decision-makers understand not only what works, but what represents good value. It also supports the identification, evaluation, and implementation of innovations that can improve outcomes and system performance, ensuring that new approaches deliver meaningful benefits for patients, the public, and society.
Key challenges we address
Our strategy focuses on addressing challenges that matter to patients, the public, and health systems.
A central challenge is ensuring that new interventions, technologies, and service models deliver genuine value. This requires careful assessment of costs and benefits, as well as consideration of equity, affordability, and long-term sustainability across diverse health conditions and populations.
We aim to improve understanding of the system-wide impacts of policy and service changes. Decisions taken in one part of the health system can have unintended consequences elsewhere, affecting capacity, access, and outcomes. Our work supports more joined-up and forward-looking decision-making.
A further challenge lies in translating complex economic evidence into forms that are meaningful for decision-makers and the public. We prioritise clarity, openness, and engagement to bridge the gap between research and practice.
Working with others
Collaboration is central to the HEPE Group’s approach. We work with a wide range of partners, including policymakers, service providers, clinicians, patient and public groups, intergovernmental and international organisations.
These partnerships help ensure that our research addresses real-world needs and contributes to improving health and care. They also support mutual learning and strengthen the role of economic evidence in policy and practice, both in the UK and globally.
Looking ahead
Through this strategy, the HEPE Group aims to contribute to better-informed decisions in health and social care and to support healthier populations and more sustainable health and care systems.
We are committed to openness, collaboration, and impact, and to working with funders, partners, and the public to address shared challenges over the coming years.