Health Economics is a growing and upcoming area within economics and the future challenges for the welfare state will increase the demand for well-educated specialists.
Associate Professor David Granlund about the new profile
Health economics is a sub-discipline of economics applying economic theories on various health issues. WHO (World Health Organization) describes health economics as:
"Health economics is concerned with the connection between health and the resources needed to promote it. Resources here involve not just money, but also people, materials and time, which could have been used in other ways. The underlying issue is that while the needs may be indefinite – for health, food, shelter, etc. – the resources to satisfy them are finite
Choices, therefore, have to be made about which needs are most important and how to manage the limited resources.
Health economics attempts to illuminate these choices. Hence, economists are involved in setting overall allocations to the health sector and in determining ways of judging the success of health policies."
The welfare state and the public sector face great challenges and the need for skilled experts and economists, especially within this field, will grow as well.
The health economics profile at the Master's Program in Economics has been made possible by a cooperation between Umeå School of Business, Economics and Statistics and the Department of Epidemiology and Global Health. We provide a challenging programme by using competencies from social science, economics, and medicine!
As a student you will take the following courses during your third semester at the program:
All courses during the third semester are given by Epidemiology and Global Health.