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Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science

The SAMRC/WITS Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science Research Unit is an extramural unit which aims to undertake rigorous and comprehensive analytical work in order to provide evidence to guide priority setting for health in South Africa. By applying innovative priority setting approaches, the Unit aims to support evidence-based resource allocation decisions in a fair and equitable way under the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI).

Key focus areas

  • Produce quantitative and qualitative evidence to inform resource allocation decisions and address policy challenges faced by decision-makers;
  • Apply novel economic approaches that account for multiple health sector objectives and health system constraints in South Africa;
  • Interrogate and perfect the processes for translating such economic evidence to decision-making.
  • Undertake cutting-edge health economics research that addresses a series of policy-relevant questions
  • Develop context-specific priority setting approaches to improve South Africa’s resource allocation decisions, and
  • Build capacity on the application of economics approaches to priority setting in health.
  • To identify a set of health issues and associated interventions across the broad disease areas of maternal, new-born and child health (MNCH), non-communicable diseases (NCDs), and injuries in South Africa.
  • To quantify the health, equity, and financial risk protection benefits of interventions selected in Objective 1, and to analyse their distributional consequences among the South African population.


For more information, visit the Priority Cost Effective Lessons for System Strengthening South Africa's website

Prof Karen Hofman
Unit Director
  • +27 11 274 9200
  • karen.hofman@wits.ac.za