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LSTM

Professor Louis Niessen

Chair of Health Economics

Interests

Dr Niessen leads research and teaches on effectiveness, efficiency & equity impact of health interventions from community to hospital level. This is to provide economic evidence for social policy, environment health and public health policy, and clinical guidance, including inequalities in the international health field and health technology assessment field. His research addresses urging adult and child health problems through real-life experiments and cluster-trials, statistical and mathematical models of ageing, and systematic reviews. It involves health economics and socio-economic evaluation, health determinants and disease epidemiology, and public health and population research. He mentors diverse postgraduates and doctorates such as economists and health professionals.

Background

Late 2013 he founded an LSTM-wide economic research group addressing infectious and chronic conditions with partner institutions world-wide, ranging from early technology development to full-scale health packages. He is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and honorary professor at the University of Warwick. His work is part of LSTM’s Centre of Applied Health Research & Delivery (CAHRD).

Earlier he was an associate professor at Hopkins’ Departments of International Health and of Health Policy & Management and part-time Professor of Public Health Economics at Norwich, both for six years. From 2010 to 2013, he was the Founding Director of the NIH-funded Centre for the Control of Chronic Diseases at icddrb, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Prior he worked in public health and environment, health economics, and population modeling at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and the National Institute for Public Health and Environment (Netherlands) and in large-scale health programmes in the eastern Himalayas of Nepal, in the Peruvian Amazon, and in rural Tanzania.

Influential Reports: World Bank on China, WHO on chronic disease risks, UNEP on environment health.

Paperback: ‘Roads to Health’ on health transitions and resource use. Amazon / University Press.

Recent publications:

Selected publications

Highly-Accessed Publications

UnitedHealth Group/National Heart, Lung, & Blood Institute Centres of Excellence. A global research network for non-communicable diseases.Lancet 2014 383(9927): 1446-7.

Fairall L, Bachmann MO, Zwarenstein M, Bateman ED, Niessen LW, Chapman R. Cost-effectiveness of educational outreach to primary care nurses to increase tuberculosis case detection and improve respiratory care:Trop Med Int Health 2010 15(3):277-86.

Stack ML, Ozawa S, Bishai DM, Mirelman A, Niessen L, Levine OS. Estimated economic benefits during the 'decade of vaccines' include savings, gains in labor productivity.Health Aff 2011 30 6 1021-8.

Van Ekdom L, Stenberg K, Scherpbier RW, Niessen LW; Global cost of child survival: estimates from country-level validation.Bull WHO 2011 Apr 1;89(4):267-77.

Baltussen R, Youngkong S, Paolucci F, Niessen L. Multi-criteria decision analysis to prioritize interventions: Capitalizing on first experiences.Health Policy 2010;96(3):262-4.

Uddin MJ, Alam N, Sarma H, Chowdhury MA, Alam DS, Niessen L. Consequences of hypertension and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, healthcare-seeking behaviors, and the health system: a population-based cross-sectional study.BMC Public Health. 2014 3;14:547.

Iqbal MS, Hossain MS, Niessen LW.: Breast cancer in low-resource settings: awareness and access to overcome sociocultural and economic barriers for early detection.Eur J Cancer Prev 2014 23:286-7.

Alam DS, Jha P, Niessen LW, Chowdhury MA, Siddiquee AT, Ahmed S, Evans TG. Smoking-attributable mortality in Bangladesh: proportional mortality study. Bull WHO. 2013;91(10):757-64.

De Ridder I, Dirks M, Niessen L, Dippel D. Unequal access to treatment with intravenous alteplase for women with acute ischemic stroke.Stroke 2013 Sep;44(9):2610-2.

Shroufi A, Chowdhury R, Anchala R, Stevens S, Blanco P, Han T, Niessen L, Franco OH. Cost effective interventions for the prevention of cardiovascular disease in low and middle income countries: a systematic review.BMC Public Health. 2013 Mar 28;13:285. Review.

Niessen LW, Bridges J, Lau BD, Wilson RF, Sharma R, Walker DG, Bass EB. Assessing the Impact of Economic Evidence on Policymakers in Health Care - Systematic Review Rockville: Agency Healthcare Research and Quality (US); 2012 Oct. Review.

Walker DG, Wilson RF, Sharma R, Bridges J, Niessen LW, Bass EB. Best Practices for Conducting Economic Evaluations in Health Care: A Systematic Review of Quality Assessment Tools. Rockville: Agency Healthcare Research Quality; 2012 Oct. Review.

Dirks M, Baeten SA, Dippel DW, van Exel NJ, Koudstaal PJ, Niessen LW Real-life costs and effects of an implementation program to increase thrombolysis in stroke.Neurology 2012 7 79 6:508-14.

Mirelman A, Mentzakis E, Paolucci F, Ozawa S, Ferraz M, Baltussen R, Niessen LW. Decision-making criteria among national policymakers in five countries: a discrete choice experiment eliciting relative preferences for equity and efficiency.Value Health 2012 15(3):534-9.

Baeten SA, Baltussen RM, Uyl-de Groot CA, Bridges JF, Niessen LW.Reducing disparities in breast cancer survival--the effect of large-scale screening of the uninsured.Breast J. 2011 17(5):548-9.

UnitedHealth, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Centers of Excellence, Cerqueira MT, Ghannem H, Levitt N, Yan LL, Miranda J, Niessen L, Prabhakaran D, Ramirez-Zea M, Rubinstein A, Wu Y, Xavier D, Smith R. Global response to non-communicable disease.BMJ 2011 30;342.

Baeten SA, Baltussen RM, Bridges J, Niessen LW. Incorporating equity-efficiency interactions in cost-effectiveness analysis-three approaches applied to breast cancer control.Value Health 2010 13:573-9.

Cobden DS, Niessen LW, Rutten FF, Redekop WK. Self-management, patient perceptions, and economic outcomes in diabetes.Value Health 2010;13(1) :138-47. Review.

Wijngaarden JD, Dirks M, Niessen LW, Fabbricotti IN, Dippel DW; Hospital rates of thrombolysis for stroke: the influence of organizational culture.Stroke 2009;40(10):3390-2.

Niessen LW, ten Hove A, Hilderink H, Weber M, Mulholland K, Ezzati M. Comparative impact assessment of child pneumonia interventions.Bull WHO 2009 Jun;87(6):472-80.

Baltussen R, Niessen L. Priority setting of health interventions: the need for multi-criteria decision analysis.BMCCost Eff Resour Alloc 2006 21;4:14.

Brouwer WB, Niessen LW, Postma MJ, Rutten FF. Need for differential discounting of costs and health effects in cost effectiveness analyses.BMJ 2005 20 331(7514):446-8.

Murray CJ, Lauer JA, Hutubessy RC, Niessen L, Tomijima N, Rodgers A, Evans DB. Effectiveness and costs of interventions to lower systolic blood pressure and cholesterol: a global and regional analysis on reduction of cardiovascular-disease risk. Lancet 2003 1;361(9359):717-25.

Redekop WK, Koopmanschap MA, Stolk RP, Rutten GE, Niessen LW. Health-related quality of life and treatment satisfaction in Dutch patients with type 2 diabetes.Diabetes Care 2002 25(3):458-63.

The evidence-based approach in health policy and health care delivery. Niessen LW, Grijseels EW, Rutten FF. Soc Sci Med 2000 Sep;51(6):859-69. Review.

Potential impact of global climate change on malaria risk. Martens WJ, Niessen LW, Rotmans J, Jetten TH, McMichael AJ. Environ Health Perspect. 1995 103(5):458-64.