Research on health services and health services delivery for many members of the Center for Health Decision Science is funded through such disparate agencies as NIH-NIA, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, PhRMA Foundation, and the Mexico Ministry of Health. Research topics being studied include:

• A project (Grand Challenge 13: Models for Prevalence and Incidence and Surrogate Relationships) to create global health solutions that can be made available affordably to those most in need in the developing world, in part building model-based tools to help assess the relationships between prevalence, incidence, and surrogate relationships from various biomarkers (Led by Drs. Goldie and Salomon and conducted at 718 Huntington Ave and the Harvard Initiative for Global Health).
  
  

• A program to evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a school-based intervention to reduce the incidence of Lyme disease in endemic areas (led by Dr. Kuntz).
  
  

• A coherent series of investigations (The Global Burden of Disease 2000 in Aging Populations) to strengthen the methodological and empirical basis for comparing assessments of health problems, as well as their determinants and consequences in aging populations (led by Dr. Salomon).
  

• An internet-based contingent valuation survey (Led by Dr. Prosser) designed to evaluate

  • the feasibility of using "willingness-to-pay" values to proxy for public preferences regarding coverage decisions.  

  • the relative importance of specific attributes of the coverage decision.

• Research using internet-based approaches to preference assessment, conducted by faculty at the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention (DACP) and the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (HCRA), including Drs. Prosser and Hammitt

• includes web-based surveys that use discrete choice experiments, willingness-to-pay, and time trade-off techniques to collect community and patient preferences for insurance coverage choices, health consequences of herpes zoster infection, and influenza vaccination.
  

  
  

• A study comparing willingness-to-pay and utilities derived from discrete choice experiments, direct valuation questions, and the EQ-5D.
  
  

• Willingness to pay and health utility measures for adults and children: PHDS faculty are leading a series of studies that estimate willingness to pay and/or health-related quality of life measures for reductions in the risks of mortality and acute or chronic illness from contaminants in food and the environment.