Amiram Gafni, DSc

McMaster University
1200 Main Street West, 3H29
Hamilton, ON L8N 3Z5
Tel: (905) 525-9140, ext. 22681
Fax: (905) 546-5211
Email: gafni@mcmaster.ca

Curriculum Vitae

Professor, Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Member, Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis

Amiram Gafni is a Professor in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and a member of CHEPA. He is also a research associate with the Research Institute for Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population, in the Faculty of Social Sciences at McMaster. His research interests are in the area of economic evaluation of health care programs (both methods development and empirical applications), modeling of consumers' health-care behaviour, models of patient-physician decision-making (e.g., shared decision-making), policy analysis and risk and decision analysis in health. He has been involved in research projects covering topics ranging from the care of premature babies to end of life care. He is involved in numerous ongoing research projects, including examining subjects related to cardiovascular disease, hypertension, HIV/AIDS, breast cancer, complex continuing care and patient values.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• economic evaluation (methods and applications)
• decision boards
• modeling of consumers' and providers' behaviour (e.g., the physician-patient encounter)

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS

Birch S, Gafni A: The Biggest Bang for the Buck or the Bigger Bucks for the Bang: The Falacy of a Cost-Effectiveness Threshold, The Journal of Health Services Research and Policy, 2006; 11:46 -51.
 
Gafni A , Birch S: Incremental Cost-Effectiveness Ratios (ICERs): The Silence of the Lamda, Social Science and Medicine, 2006; 62:2091-2100.
 
Charles C, Gafni A, Whelan T, O’Brien MA: Cultural Influences on the Physician-Patient Encounter: The Case of Shared Treatment Decision-Making, Patient Education and Counselling, 2006; 63:262-267.

Birch S, Gafni A: Information Created to Evade Reality (ICER): Things We Should Not Look To For Answers, Pharmacoeconomics, 2006; 24:1121-1131.
 
Whelan T, Levine MN, Willan A, Gafni A et al: Effect of Decision Aid on knowledge and treatment decision making for breast cancer surgery: a randomized trial, JAMA, 2004; 292:435-441.
 
Birch S, Gafni A: Economics and the evaluation of health care programs: generalizability of methods and the implications for generalizability of results, Health Policy, 2003; 64:207-219.
 
Donaldson C, Birch S, Gafni A: The ‘distribution problem’ in economic evaluation: income and the valuation of costs and consequences of health care programs, Health Economics, 2002; 11:55-70

Sendi P, Gafni A, Birch S: Opportunity costs and uncertainty in the economic evaluation of health care interventions, Health Economics, 2002; 11:23-31.

Birch S, Gafni A: On being NICE in the UK: guidelines for technology appraisal for the NHS in England and Wales, Health Economics, 2002; 11:185-191.

Charles C, Gafni A, Whelan TJ. Decision-making in the physician-patient encounter: revisiting the shared treatment decision-making model. Social Science and Medicine 1999; 49:651-661. 

TEACHING ACTIVITIES

• Economic Evaluation of Health Care Programs