Rebecca Addo is a Research Fellow at CHERE (Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation).

Her interest in the field of health economics began when she started working as a hospital nurse in Ghana.

“I realised that there were a lot of things we needed to work with on the ward that we didn’t have resources for,” Dr Addo said.

“There were also conditions that could be prevented before they got to hospital.”

This prompted her to complete her Master of Public Health degree from the University of Ghana, before coming to UTS in 2015 to complete a PhD in health economics.

Her PhD thesis focused on assessing the feasibility of a developing country (Ghana), constrained with human and data resources, to conduct and use Health Technology Assessment (HTA) for health decision making. Her thesis found that it was feasible for Ghana to conduct and use HTA in their health system when the identified barriers and challenges such as limited human and data capacity and lack of knowledge of HTA. The thesis also highlighted that limited data for HTA in Ghana, meant relying on international data in the short to medium term, however, these data need to be transformed to be context-specific before they are suitable for use in an economic evaluation.

Currently, Rebecca’s main research interests include, priority setting in health, HTA, and the application of HTA methods to health care decisions in developing countries and development and measurement of health outcomes.

She has skills in mixed research methods including economic modelling, systematic literature reviews, and stakeholder engagements through qualitative research methods.

In her current position, Rebecca is part of the Economic Evaluation team that critically appraises economic evaluations for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC) and Medical Services Advisory Committee (MSAC). Rebecca conducts health technology assessment for the MSAC and other external bodies such as the Singapore Agency for Care Effectiveness. Rebecca also works with the Quality of Life team on the development and psychometric testing of health outcome measures such as EQ-5D-5L and its bolt-on descriptors. Her work in this area involves working with researchers internationally, in the UK and Ghana. In addition to research work, Rebecca teaches health economics subjects offered in the university.

“Companies submit data on a new drug, and we evaluate what has been presented for the Department of Health,” she said.

“We look at the data so see if the drug does what it does, models, the safety and effectiveness of the drug, whether the government should fund it and how much it will cost the government in the first six years.”

Previously, Rebecca has worked as a general nurse and as a lecturer in nursing and public health institutions located in Ghana, and as a tutor in health economics at UTS, Australia. Rebecca also has experience in teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students in public health, health economics, and nursing both in Ghana and Australia.