In this episode of EcoEchoes, we speak with Professor Job van Exel, a health economist, director of research at ESHPM, and the original founder of this podcast. We discuss the challenges in defining and measuring informal caregiving, especially for incorporating it into economic evaluations and then to further down the line inform policy. For example, we talk about the distinctions between objective and subjective burden, and the different assumptions and potential biases in different valuation approaches (proxy good, opportunity cost, contingent valuation, perseverance time). In the final part of the episode, Job reflects on his career trajectory, the role of luck and curiosity, and gives advice for early-stage researchers on career planning and embracing opportunities.

Guest: Job van Exel, Professor of Health Economics at Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management (ESHPM), Erasmus University Rotterdam

Host: Fanny Tallgren, Andrea De Palma

If you are interested in reading more about this topic, then this paper summarizes work done at ESHPM in terms of measuring and valuing the impact of patient interventions on informal carers. In this paper, you can learn more about the perseverance time measure, and in this paper, how to use a discrete choice experiment to determine the value of an hour of time caregiving. This paper describes how to include broader effects of caregiving in an economic evaluation of a patient intervention using a measure that is compatible with how effects are measured in patients (and the healthcare perspective). This paper shows how to estimate caregiver time using information that is typically available in clinical trials: the EQ-5D scores of patients and their gender.