News

The CHOICE Institute is excited to launch its new Certificate in Data Science in Health Economics and Outcomes Research. Big data is the new norm across health industries, and the ability to apply data science tools…

Dr. Noémi Kreif, MA, MS, PhD joined the CHOICE Institute and the Department of Pharmacy in March as an Assistant Professor. She joins us most recently from the University of York Centre for Health Economics…

Several CHOICE PhD students & alumni including Samantha Clark (’22), Ben Nwogu (3rd year student), and Rachel Wittenauer (4th year student) recently co-authored a publication in The Lancet HIV titled, “Impact of self-testing for oral…

The CHOICE Institute is pleased to announce the 2024-26 cohort of HEOR Fellows who will start their programs on July 1, 2024. Our HEOR fellows work closely with faculty in the CHOICE Institute on projects where…

Two NIH-funded models provide detailed estimates of costs and benefits An analysis funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of National Institutes of Health, suggests that compared with the life-long costs…

Congratulations to Felipe Montano-Campos, a third-year PhD student in Health Economics and Outcomes Research at the CHOICE Institute, has been awarded the Fellowship from the Latino Center for Health. An interdisciplinary health sciences research center…

Sara Khor, 5th year PhD student in The CHOICE Institute, was awarded the the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Conquer Cancer Merit Award for her team’s study that examined the association between pre-diagnosis financial…

Shangqing (Joyce) Jiang, 5th-year PhD student at the CHOICE Institute, presented her work with Drs. David Veenstra and Greg Guzauskas as a podium presentation at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) annual conference in…

In November, 4th-year CHOICE Institute PhD student, Rachel Wittenauer, was invited to attend a meeting hosted by the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) at their headquarters in Washington, DC for an APhA-CDC project, “Improving Standard Immunization…

Research Assistant Professor and CHOICE Faculty Fellow, Douglas Barthold, PhD was appointed by Governor Jay Inslee to serve on the Washington State Prescription Drug Affordability Board (PDAB). Authorized under Senate Bill 5532, this five-member board…

Disturbing financial practice by Medicare Part D sponsors revealed in University of Washington study of data from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services Medicare is the single largest provider of health insurance in the…

Access the report here: https://sop.washington.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023-CHOICE-Institute-Annual-Report.pdf

Led by Dr. Anirban Basu, researchers at the CHOICE Institute, University of Washington, have published an economic-principles-based guide on factors the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) may consider when drafting their strategy to…

Seattle, WA – University of Washington Professor Anirban Basu, the Stergachis Family Endowed Director of the CHOICE Institute, has published a paper in Science Advances on a controversial topic regarding whether variables such as race…

UW School of Pharmacy & CHOICE Institute Professor Andy Stergachis co-led an invitational workshop at the University of Oxford to discuss research on the relationship between substandard and falsified antimicrobials and antimicrobial resistance. Held on…

Researchers from The Comparative Effectiveness, Policy & Economics (CHOICE) Institute in the Department of Pharmacy recently published a simulation modeling study in Annals of Internal Medicine that urges U.S. health policymakers to consider routine genomic…

Professor Emeritus Lou Garrison spoke recently at health technology assessment (HTA) meetings held in Cairo and New Delhi with similar themes in both regions. HTA is well appreciated in both regions and steps are being taken to build institutions and capacity to carry out HTA.

Lou was a keynote speaker in the 1st Annual Arab Health Economics Meeting: Evolution of Health Economics in Arab Countries.

The CHOICE Institute is pleased to announce the 2023-25 cohort of CHOICE MS HEOR Fellows who will start their programs on July 1, 2023. Our HEOR MS fellows work closely with faculty in the CHOICE…

School of Pharmacy and The CHOICE Institute Professor Sean D. Sullivan is among four University of Washington researchers who have been named AAAS Fellows, according to a Jan. 31 announcement by the American Association for…

During the past academic year 2021-22, UWSOP Professor and Associate Director Beth Devine enjoyed a sabbatical as a Fulbright US Senior Scholar and a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Methodology in Health Sciences, Department…

Congratulations to Lou Garrison, Professor Emeritus for The CHOICE Institute, who has been awarded the 2022 Avedis Donabedian Lifetime Achievement Award by ISPOR—The Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research recognizing his outstanding, life-long contribution to…

October 21st, 2:00 – 4:30 PM | Hosted virtually on ZOOM Webinar | Hosted in-person at the Health Sciences Education Building, Room 101 Please join us for the 2022 CHOICE Institute Annual Symposium. Health Equity is…

Enrique Saldarriaga, PhD candidate in the School of Pharmacy and The CHOICE Institute, has won first place in the 2022 UW Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition. His dissertation, The Value of Using Local Data to…

The UW School of Pharmacy is proud to announce that Yilin Chen, a PhD candidate in The CHOICE Institute, has been selected as one of the Magnuson Scholars for the 2022–2023 academic year. While pursuing her…

UWSOP Professor and Associate Director David Veenstra, along with Vanderbilt University Professor Josh Peterson, and Geisinger Health Assistant Professor Jing Hao, have been awarded a 5-year, $4.5M grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute…

Dr. Kyu Eun Lee, PhD will be joining The CHOICE Institute and the Department of Pharmacy in January as The CHOICE Institute Endowed Assistant Professor of Health Decision Sciences. Dr. Lee obtained a PhD in…

A research study published in Value in Health (and deemed as one of the Editor’s Choice articles) has determined that US insurance payers have higher preferences for clinical and health-related quality of life outcomes when…

UWSOP Research Assistant Professor and CHOICE Faculty Fellow Douglas Barthold has been awarded a K01 grant from the National Institute of Aging (NIA) for his project titled, Long-term effects of today’s medical care access policies…

Dr. Jing Li, MA, PhD will be joining The CHOICE Institute and the Department of Pharmacy in August as an Assistant Professor of Health Economics. Dr. Li earned her PhD in Health Policy (Economics Track) from the…

ISPOR—the professional society for health economics and outcomes research (HEOR)— recently announced its annual round of award winners, and three faculty members from The CHOICE Institute – Anirban Basu, Beth Devine and Aasthaa Bansal – have been named recipients for 2021.

We are pleased to share the 2020-2021 CHOICE Institute Annual Report. This past academic year was extraordinarily challenging, yet we are so proud of the many achievements and perseverance of our students, faculty, staff, and…

We are pleased to announce the 2021-23 cohort of CHOICE MS HEOR Fellows. The CHOICE Institute has partnerships with four pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies that sponsor two-year fellowship programs for recent PharmD graduates. The trainee spends…

Congratulations to Rachel Wittenauer and Qingcheng Mao, 2021 recipients of the Elmer M. Plein Endowed Research Fund, an award established to encourage, promote and support research and innovative practice in pharmacy. Rachel, a CHOICE Program…

The Pharmacy Leadership and Education Institute has named UWSOP’s Jennifer Bacci the 2021 recipient of the Albert B. Prescott Pharmacy Leadership Award. Dr. Bacci is recognized for her outstanding leadership example in the Academia-CPESN Transformation…

We are excited to announce that Elizabeth (Lizzy) Brouwer, PhD, will be re-joining the CHOICE Institute as a research scientist. Lizzy will be working on our ICER project team as a lead modeler.  In this…

Graduate students are at the heart of our leading innovations and most impactful work — from developing models for value assessment in pharmaceuticals, to evaluating government policies and programs like the Generic Drug User Fee…

The 2020 Annual Report for the Comparative Health Outcomes, Policy & Economics (CHOICE) Institute is now available. Learn more about CHOICE’s extraordinary team and impactful work: https://lnkd.in/g6BFFYw

Researchers at the University of Minnesota and University of Washington found a statistical relationship between the number of hospital beds (ICU and non-ICU) occupied by COVID-19 patients in a state and reported mortality. Published today…

According to a study released today, Anirban Basu, Stergachis Family Endowed Director of The CHOICE Institute at the UW School of Pharmacy, has developed one of the first models that can estimate the COVID-19 Infection…

In September, UW School of Pharmacy CHOICE alum Jonathan D. Campbell, PhD, will become Senior Vice President for Health Economics at the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER). Having collaborated with ICER closely over…

We are pleased to announce the 2020-22 cohort of CHOICE MS Fellows. The CHOICE Institute has partnerships with four pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies that sponsor two-year fellowship programs for recent PharmD graduates. The trainee spends…

Introducing “Health Years in Total:” A Novel Framework for Valuing Health Outcomes in Cost-Effectiveness Analyses. CHOICE Researchers Introduce a New metric that provides a robust and feasible approach that overcomes specific limitations of the QALY…

About 15% of hospitals have closed since 1990, and rates of hospital closure—particularly in rural areas—have increased over the last decade. Dr. Kritee Gujral and Dr. Anirban Basu’s recent National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)…

Jens Grueger, PhD is the 2019-2020 President Elect for the Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) and current Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group in Zurich, Switzerland where he is the senior…

The Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) brings together researchers, clinicians, educators, managers, and policy makers from diverse backgrounds and disciplines. SMDM is the leading society for studying and advancing decision sciences in health, including…

CHOICE alum Will Canestaro was selected as a 2019 Seattle Health Innovator of the Year in Collaboration. This award recognizes individuals who are exhibiting extraordinary talent in the four attributes that contribute to successful innovation:…

CHOICE faculty member Doug Barthold has expanded his research program that studies risk factors and care for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). In a recent publication, he and his co-authors examined diagnosis patterns to…

UW Cost-Effectiveness Modeling Team, Ryan Hansen and Greg Guzauskas, were recently presenters at the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review’s (ICER) New England CEPAC Meeting on Type 2 Diabetes at Brown University in Providence, Rhode…

Teams at UWSOP and Fred Hutch look at emerging sickle cell disease therapies The National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) funded a unique collaborative, The Sickle Cell Clinical and Economic…

The 41st Annual North American Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) is just down the road in Portland this year (Oct 20-23) and we hope to connect with you there. To find…

Zachary Marcum, PhD, PharmD was recently awarded the Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders Career Development Award (K76) from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and The John A. Hartford Foundation. Notably, Zach is the first…

Recently promoted faculty are finding news ways to solve significant population health problems from Alzheimer’s and related dementias to kidney disease to cancer to MRSA. These preeminent researchers were all recently awarded promotions. Learn more…

Celebrating 25 years, The CHOICE Institute continues to grow and transform, expanding its impact on population health. “At CHOICE, we work to advance the study of health economics, pharmaceutical outcomes research, and policy to improve…

Never doubt the profound impact that our faculty and alumni have had on health care nationwide through decades of advocacy for increased access to patient care. “Pharmacists are the medication experts on the health care…

The potential impact of personalized medicine launched here at UW School of Pharmacy about twenty years ago, when Dave Veenstra’s graduate student Mitch Higashi,‘01, assembled a 200-member cohort of warfarin patients to study genetic factors…

The University of Washington’s School of Pharmacy today announced a collaboration with global biopharmaceutical company UCB to improve access to care for people living with epilepsy.This interdisciplinary project will explore ways in which community pharmacists…

Aasthaa Bansal leads an NIH MERIT award-winning team to develop decision-making frameworks to guide post-treatment care for cancer survivors Despite receiving effective primary treatment, many cancer survivors remain at risk of relapse and associated morbidity…

To find the posters and presentations of CHOICE students, alumni, and faculty, please refer to the PDF attached here. CHOICE at ISPOR 2019  

On the evening of May 4th, 2019, Oregon State University College of Pharmacy alumni and friends gathered at Portland City Grill to honor the recipients of the 2019 Icons of Pharmacy Award including Sean D….

Congratulations to the 2019 winners of the Louis Sr. and Marilyn Garrison Endowed Prize in Health Policy and Economics, Elizabeth Brouwer (4th year CHOICE PhD student) and Gilbert Ko (3rd year PharmD/MBA student)! CHOICE Professor…

Two CHOICE graduate students were recently awarded global health travel fellowships. Erik Landaas received the Global Opportunities (GO) Health fellowship for his work in Thailand. Enrique Saldarriaga received the Stergachis Endowed Fellowship for International Exchange for…

Please join us in welcoming Anthony Morgan (who goes by Morgan) to The CHOICE Institute! Morgan is serving as CHOICE’s first Research Project Manager. Prior to joining us here at UWSOP, he was at Seattle…

Congratulations to CHOICE PhD student Elizabeth Brouwer who received conference travel funds from the Population Health Initiative at the University of Washington! Elizabeth will use the funds to attend the American Society of Health Economists…

Congratulations to third-year PhD student in the CHOICE Institute, Lauren Strand who was named the UWSOP Magnuson Scholar for 2019-2020. Magnuson Scholars are selected for their excellent academic performance and outstanding potential for research in the health sciences; they…

Congratulations to our PharmD students, Michael Sporck, ‘20, Eunice Kim, ‘20, Hanna Kleiboeker, ‘20 and Erin Ichinotsubo, ‘21, who won first place at the highly competitive Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) Foundation 19th Annual…

Congratulations to Jennifer Bacci, Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacy; H. Steve White, Professor and Chair, Department of Pharmacy; and Sabra Zarâa, CHOICE PhD student, Pharmacy on receiving one of the 2019 pilot research grants awarded by the…

This year, the CHOICE Institute’s Certificate in Health Economics and Outcomes Research program has been reaching a wide audience. In addition to offering the traditional distance learning program to US and international students, engaging 40 students from…

CHOICE faculty member Doug Barthold was awarded the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Pilot Award, for a proposal titled “Alzheimer’s disease related neuropathology among patients with medication treated type 2 diabetes in a community-based autopsy cohort.”…

The CHOICE Institute welcomed Professor Emeritus Charles E. Phelps, PhD, for the 2019 CHOICE Institute Annual Symposium. Dr. Phelps provided an overview of multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods. “The CHOICE Institute was delighted to host…

Associate Dean Andy Stergachis was appointed to a committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to conduct a study sponsored by the Veterans Administration, to assess the long-term health effects of antimalarial…

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. CHOICE PhD student Erik Landaas has partnered with PhD students at UW School of Nursing, Kwankaew Wongchareon and Ana Carolina Sauer…

CHOICE Alumnae Carrie Savage Bennette and Blythe Adamson, recent CHOICE alum, will be presenting/co-leading one of the short courses, Tools for Reproducible Real-World Data Analysis. This course will focus on the concepts and tools of…

Congratulations to the twelve UWSOP students, comprised of eleven CHOICE Students and fellows and one PharmD student (co-authored with a CHOICE student), who were selected to present posters the annual ISPOR conference in May. Several…

Please welcome Marina Gano, the new Department of Pharmacy/CHOICE Institute Graduate Program and Operations Manager. Marina grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, after first living in Germany and Maryland. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Foreign…

CHOICE faculty member Beth Devine and CHOICE PhD student Shuxian Chen led an invited workshop last month at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) Nexus Meeting in Orlando Florida. There, they presented their newly developed framework and tool…

Team seeks to improve the projections of the future burden of the disease. Anirban Basu, director of the CHOICE Institute at UWSOP, and professor in the schools of Pharmacy and Public Health at the University…

CHOICE PhD student Erik Landaas received funding to conduct a mobile health validation study in Thailand. The study is funded by Washington Research Foundation (WRF) and his primary co-investigators include two UW School of Nursing PhD…

Congratulations to CHOICE Institute alumnus and Affiliate Assistant Professor, Kai Yeung, PharmD PhD, `15, who received a research grant from the Patrick and Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation’s Greater Value Portfolio program. Kai’s project…

At the 2018 International Conference on Health Policy Statistics (ICHPS) held in Charleston, South Carolina, Anirban Basu was awarded the Mid-Career Excellence Award from the American Statistical Association Section on Health Policy Statistics (HPSS). Anirban…

The newest researcher in The CHOICE Institute at UWSOP, Doug Barthold is taking a couple of approaches that use data and economic modeling to find potential treatments and trends in care of people with Alzheimer’s disease…

The prospect of developing dementia is terrifying for most people, particularly for those with family members who have had the disease. Many wonder what they can do to prevent the onset of dementia—which is where…

UW Pharmacy’s Shelly Gray and UW Medicine’s Elizabeth Phelan are teaming up to identify ways to prevent falls in older adults. Their study, “Reducing Central Nervous System (CNS)-active Medications to Prevent Falls and Injuries in…

Researchers Doug Barthold of the University of Washington and Julie Zissimopoulos of the University of Southern California published the first study to compare multiple types of blood pressure medications and the beneficial effect they may…

The PhRMA Foundation and the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC) announced that Lou Garrison is one of the first place recipients of the 2018 Value Assessment Challenge Awards. These awards are designed to encourage innovative approaches…

Assistant Professor Aasthaa Bansal at the CHOICE Institute was recently awarded a $2.5M+, seven-year Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) (R37) award from the National Cancer Institute to develop a dynamic decision-making framework for…

A new study by dozens of researchers from the University of Washington and around the world has found that Greece’s population health declined markedly and death rates rose sharply after harsh austerity measures were imposed…

The CHOICE Institute & the Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research (HICOR) Joint Seminar On Wednesday, May 2nd, Peter Neumann, Sc.D. joined our PHEnOM seminar to discuss whether the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER)…

Congratulations to 3rd year, PhD student Lauren Strand who received the Louis Garrison Sr. And Marilyn Garrison Endowed Prize in Health Policy and Economics prize! Lauren’s paper is titled “New Statin use and left ventricular structure:…

Collaborative research between UW School of Pharmacy and VA Puget Sound looked at 175,000 patients In a recent study, researchers at the University of Washington and the VA Puget Sound Health Care System have found…

With India rolling out the one of the largest public health insurance initiatives in the world, it became more important than ever for government, university, and health care leaders to understand key aspects to health economics. Dr….

From all of us at CHOICE, we hope your year is off to a good start. Our PhD students have been busy since last year and we wanted to take the time to highlight a…

We welcome Dr. Doug Barthold, PhD., Research Assistant Professor, to the faculty of the Department of Pharmacy and to The CHOICE Institute! Doug comes to us from the University of Southern California where he was…

Partnership between Washington Research Foundation and The CHOICE Institute at UWSOP creates opportunities for students and researchers at non-profit research institutions in Washington state The CHOICE Institute at UWSOP is pleased to announce a partnership…

The University of Washington School of Pharmacy congratulates Scott Strassels, PhD, PharmD, on his new position as assistant professor in the Division of Trauma, Critical Care and Burn and scientific director of the Center for…

We are witnessing a period of renaissance, as current advances in medical technology and breakthroughs are unprecedented in human history. There is a cure for Hepatitis C that works in weeks. Polio used to afflict…

The question about the benefits and pitfalls of genetic testing is discussed in, “Is health care ready for routing DNA screening? A massive new trial will find out” in Science Magazine. Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research and…

Five UWSOP faculty and alumni have led ISPOR over the past 20 years UW School of Pharmacy faculty and alumni are again recognized as leaders in health care. The International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes…

“Great scientists and great surfers share a common trait. They don’t position themselves where the big wave is now; they position themselves where the next big wave is going to be. PORPP teaches students to…