Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics
Amiram Gafni
BSc (Technion), MSc (Technion), DSc (Technion)Professor, Department of Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics
Member, Centre for Health Economics and Policy Analysis (CHEPA)
Research Associate, Programme for Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population
905.525.9140 x 22681
905.546.5211
gafni@mcmaster.ca
McMaster University
1280 Main Street West
CRL-208
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
L8S 4K1
Office location: CRL-208
Academic Interests
Dr. Gafni's research interests in the area of economic evaluation of health care programmes (both methods development and empirical applications), modelling of consumers' health-care behaviour, models of patient-physician decision-making (shared decision-making), policy analysis and risk and decision analysis in health. Among methodological contributions are the development of the healthy-years equivalent (HYE) preference-based measure of outcome for programme evaluation and the development of a bedside decision instrument, a method for helping patients to reveal their preferences regarding treatment.
Current HRM Graduate Students
Heather MacDonald
Carolina Angular
Mat Mercuri
Recent HRM Graduate Students
C. Kennedy, PhD
S. Whittaker, PhD
R. Wong, MSc
Selected 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 (λ)”, 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.