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Latest Update on the 2027 IHEA Congress
Change in Congress Location
As announced in the March newsletter, the decision was made to move the 2027 IHEA Congress out of Guayaquil, Ecuador, due to government travel advisories. Although we are not yet able to confirm a new location and date for the Congress, we hope to have more information to share with you soon. Thank you for your patience during our ongoing inquiries. We will confirm a new Congress location and provide more details soon.
Extension of Application Deadline for 2026-27 Mentoring Program!
The following is a re-issue of a call for applications for IHEA’s Mentoring Program, which supports early- and mid-career health economists in their professional development and personal wellbeing. The application deadline for both mentors and mentees has now been extended to Monday, May 4, 2026.
Would you like to participate as a mentor or mentee in IHEA’s mentoring program for early- and mid-career health economists?
The IHEA Mentoring Program supports early- and mid-career health economists in their professional development and personal wellbeing. Mentees are matched to mentors based on career goals versus experience, professional development needs versus skills, common research interests and other characteristics. The program consists of at least four meetings, usually via video call, over a one-year period. Since the program was started in 2019, it has grown to nearly 100 mentor-mentee pairings per year.
We are calling for expressions of interest in being a mentor in the next round of the program, which will start in June 2026. There are many benefits of serving as a mentor, such as:
- Being able to share valuable knowledge with others, based on your experience
- Helping the next generation of health economists to use and further develop their skills, and motivate and support them to fulfill their potential
- Developing your communication, coaching and leadership skills
- Providing an opportunity to reflect on your own practice.
- Mentors should have at least seven years post-graduation experience; our mentees are looking for mentors who have more experience than they do, and particularly that mentors are working independently and are taking on some management or leadership roles.
We are also calling for applications from IHEA members to participate as mentees. While the program may be of particular interest to early-career health economists (currently studying or within 7 years of graduation), it is also of benefit to mid-career health economists who are working more independently and assuming more responsibility for supervision, managing research teams and other leadership activities.
Mentee applicants must be current IHEA members to be eligible. In the event that we cannot identify mentors for all prospective mentees, first-time applicants will take priority. Please note that you should be highly motivated, willing to take responsibility for contacting and following up with your mentor, and willing to invest time in preparing for and reflecting on meetings with your mentor.
You can apply to participate as a mentor or mentee using the buttons below. Please note that prospective mentees will need to log into their IHEA member account to complete the application. Mentors are not required to be IHEA members.
Applications close on Monday, May 4, 2026 at 21:00 UTC.
Apply to be a Mentor: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/DVXZ6PP
Apply to be a Mentee: https://healtheconomics.org/member-center/
Arrow Award Winning Paper Announced!
The Arrow Award, established in honor of Kenneth Arrow, recognizes excellence in the field of health economics. The award is presented to the author(s) of the paper judged to be the best paper published in health economics in English in the award year.
The 34th Arrow Award for the best paper in health economics is awarded to:
Londoño-Vélez, J., and Saravia, E., 2025. The Impact of Being Denied a Wanted Abortion on Women and Their Children. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 140(2), pp. 1061-1110.
The Arrow Award Committee proudly recognizes the authors of this important paper that examines the causal consequences of being denied a wanted abortion on women and their children in Colombia. The authors leverage a unique institutional setting in which women seek legal abortions through a constitutional writ called a tutela, with cases randomly assigned to judges. Drawing on high-quality administrative microdata, they document that female judges are 20 percentage points (32%) less likely to deny abortion cases than male judges and use the judge’s sex as an instrument for abortion denial.
The findings reveal both immediate and lasting consequences of abortion denial. In the short run, denial increases a woman’s risk of death by 2.5 percentage points within nine months, largely due to unsafe abortion procedures, and raises the likelihood of carrying the pregnancy to term by 31 percentage points. Tracking outcomes up to 15 years later, the authors show that women denied a wanted abortion experience more health problems, lower educational attainment, reduced labor force participation, and lower household earnings.
Strikingly, the consequences extend across generations. Because many women seeking abortions are already mothers, the income losses from abortion denial reach existing children, who are more likely to be raised in poverty, to rely on public assistance, to leave school early, and to enter the labor force prematurely. The findings illuminate how restrictions on reproductive health care reinforce cycles of disadvantage and impose lasting fiscal and human costs.
By combining a credible identification strategy with rich administrative data and a valuable long-run perspective, this paper makes a landmark contribution to the economics of reproductive health, gender, and intergenerational mobility.
We congratulate the authors on the publication of this important paper and thank the members of the Prize Committee for all their hard work.
Arrow Award Prize Committee
Chairperson: Marcella Alsan (Stanford University)
Gabriella Conti (University College London)
Apostolos Davillas (Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn)
Monica Deza (Syracuse University)
Sonja de New (Monash University)
Susan Griffin (University of York)
Bruce Hollingsworth (Lancaster University)
Myelene Lagarde (London School of Economics)
Aurélia Lépine (University College London)
Hsien-Ming Lien (National Cheng-Chi University)
Daniel Maceira (Universidad de San Andrés)
Peter May (King’s College London)
Nhung Nghiem (Australian National University)
Jalandhar Pradhan (Rourkela Orissa)
Stephanie von Hinke Kessler Scholder (University of Bristol)
Sandy Tubeuf (Université Catholique de Louvain)
Judit Vall Castelló (Universitat de Barcelona)
Marcia Weaver (University of Washington)
Xiaoyan Lei (Peking University)
Call for Papers: ASHEcon, HERO & IHEA Sessions at ASSA 2027
The International Health Economics Association (IHEA), in collaboration with the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon) and the Health Economics Research Organization (HERO), invites submissions for presentation at the 2027 Allied Social Science Association (ASSA) Annual Meeting, to be held in Washington, D.C., from Sunday, January 3 to Tuesday, January 5, 2027.
Based on submitted abstracts, papers will be selected for two IHEA-organized sessions, one ASHEcon-organized session, and five HERO-organized sessions. IHEA seeks abstracts for sessions focused primarily on internationally relevant topics in health economics. ASHEcon seeks abstracts related to U.S.-focused health economics topics, and HERO seeks abstracts addressing issues of broad relevance to the health economics field.
Submission Guidelines
Abstract submission is open to all. Abstract text must be 3,000 characters (including spaces) or fewer.
If you wish to submit your abstract as part of a coordinated group for consideration as a complete session, you must provide suggested discussants for each paper. Please note that submission as a group does not guarantee that all papers in the set will be included in the program.
IHEA, ASHEcon, and HERO are independent organizations, each holding affiliate status within ASSA.
Please submit abstracts by April 30, 2026 here.
Join one of our Special Interest Groups (SIGs) – Make the Most of your Membership in 2026!
Our Special Interest Groups (SIGs) provide a forum for IHEA members with a common interest in networking, keeping updated on the latest research and sharing ideas and knowledge.
SIGs are organized by IHEA members for IHEA members – join a SIG today and start engaging with colleagues across the world working in the same area.
There are currently 12 SIGs which focus on a specific research area:
- Economics of Children’s Health & Wellbeing
- Economics of Digital Health Technology
- Economics of Genomics and Precision Medicine (Econ-Omics)
- Economics of Obesity
- Economics of Palliative and End-of-Life Care
- Economics of Risky Health Behaviors
- Equity Informative Economic Evaluation
- Financing for Universal Health Coverage
- Health Preference Research
- Health Systems Efficiency
- Health Workforce
- Mental Health Economics
There is also a SIG focusing on Teaching Health Economics and another focusing on supporting Early Career Researchers.
If you don’t already belong to a SIG, join by:
- Signing in at the member login on the IHEA website
- Selecting the Special Interest Group button
- Click on “Join Group” next to the SIG that you wish to join
Funding, Publication and Other Opportunities
PhD Scholarships:
- University of New South Wales, Health Economics PhD Scholarship
- Learn more here
Call for Submissions – Regional News
Do you have news to share from your region for our IHEA newsletter? Our newsletter is disseminated to thousands of health economists around the world each month, and we are eager to share relevant news from all regions of the world.
Regional news items can be sent to ihea@healtheconomics.org by the 20th of each month.
Upcoming Events
A New Approach to Comparing EQ-5D-5L Value Sets: What Really Makes a Difference to People?
Date: April 28, 2026
Time: 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm UTC+0
Speakers: Ed Webb – Associate Professor at the Academic Unit of Health Economics, University of Leeds.
Health Spending and Outcomes
Date: May 13, 2026
Time: 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm UTC+0
Speakers: Eliana Chavarría-Pino – Postdoctoral Researcher at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. James Lomas – Senior Lecturer at the Department of Economics and Related Studies at the University of York. Fouché Venter – Executive Director of Economic Research Southern Africa. Damian Clarke – Researcher and Associate Professor of Economics at The University of Exeter, and The University of Chile. Marcia Weaver, PhD, – Research Professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.
A 10-Year Scoping Review: An Inspirational or Cautionary Tale?
Date: May 25, 2026
Time: 5:00 am – 6:00 am UTC+0
Speakers: Nikki McCaffrey – Associate Professor and health economist at Deakin University, Victoria, Australia and Head of Cancer Economics.
Biobanks and Genomics in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Emerging Opportunities for Research and Health Economics Webinar & Panel Discussion
Date: May 28, 2026
Time: 8:00 am – 9:00 am UTC+0
Speakers: Professor Segun Fatumo – Chair of Genomic Diversity at Queen Mary University of London and Professor Chen Zhu – College of Economics and Management, China Agricultural University, Beijing.
ASHEcon 2026 Annual Conference
Date: June 7 – June 10, 2026
Location: Hyatt Regency Minneapolis – Minneapolis, MN
Stay tuned for more on upcoming IHEA webinars! You can view all upcoming events here.
Check out our website here.