Health economist joins NPLB to help capture the full value of medicines
By: Priscilla VanderVeer
We’re pleased to welcome Ben Cohen, Ph.D., MPH, as Senior Director of Health Economics.
For years, NPLB has worked to demonstrate the full value of biomedical innovation. The conversation about drug pricing often focuses on short-term costs, ignores the consequences of pricing policies on future innovation, and fails to account for the benefits medicines bring to patients, families, and society. Ben’s addition to our team strengthens NPLB’s ability to help innovators demonstrate the full value of the medicines they’re developing.
Ben will advance our efforts with a focus on Generalized Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (GCEA), an approach designed to capture the full value of biomedical innovation for patients and society, measuring dimensions of value that traditional assessment often overlooks. Ben will collaborate directly with early-stage innovators to employ GCEA for emerging medicines, conduct rigorous analyses on drug pricing policy impacts, and engage with key stakeholders across the ecosystem to advance the evolving biopharma innovation landscape.
Ben brings more than a decade of experience supporting pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies through health economics and outcomes research (HEOR), real-world evidence, and policy analysis.
Most recently, he served as Director of HEOR & Epidemiology at Stage Analytics, where he led research engagements and teams across multiple client projects.
He holds a Ph.D. in Health Economics and Policy from the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy and a Master of Public Health in Health Policy and Management from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
His research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at leading scientific conferences, including the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR).
What is GCEA?
Effective treatments can help patients live longer and healthier lives, reduce burdens on caregivers and families, and create broader benefits for society. Medical breakthroughs can also generate scientific advances that make future innovations possible. Sadly, traditional value assessments rarely capture these broader benefits.
NPLB’s GCEA work seeks to build a more complete and rigorous understanding of the value of medicines, and what may be lost when policies fail to account for that value.
What does this mean for NPLB and the industry?
With Ben on the team, we will be able to:
Help innovators develop evidence-based value assessments. Early-stage companies should have a resource for building the value story of the medicines they’re developing. Now they do.
Equip policymakers with a clearer understanding of the potential consequences of drug pricing proposals. We need to understand how policy choices affect patients today and the development of tomorrow’s treatments before we change our healthcare system.
Communicate complex economic findings to diverse audiences. The economics of drug development are critical to informing the policy solutions ahead. But that information shouldn’t hide behind complex jargon, and it should include things that truly matter to patients and caregivers.
Americans don’t have to choose between affordability and innovation. A more complete understanding of value can help us achieve both. We’re excited to have Ben on the team and look forward to the research and insights he will bring to this important work.
Learn more about GCEA here.