There were an estimated 8.3 million new cases of tuberculosis (TB) in 2000, resulting in approximately 1.8 million deaths, a large portion of which were due to co-infection with HIV, especially in the WHO Africa region. The Center for Health Decision Science maintains a broad research agenda in the area of cost-effectiveness of tuberculosis control strategies, including researchers at 718 Huntington Ave, the Harvard Initiative for Global Health, and ABT Associates.
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Several core faculty members are working on the development of decision-analytics models to assess potential benefits, costs, and cost-effectiveness ratios of options for dealing with multi-drug resistant TB in different countries (Drs. Resch, Weinstein and Salomon).
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Additional work with the Global Alliance for Tuberculosis Drug Development revolves around examining the potential epidemiologic benefits that might result from developing new shorter drug regimens for pulmonary TB. End products of this work include forecasts of trends under alternative scenarios including expanding existing TB control strategies relative to applying newer technologies, either developed or under development, within areas with different rates of HIV co-infection (Dr. Salomon and doctoral student Hogan).