A study of the relationship between infectious diseases and health economics: some evidences from Nepal

Objective: To measure the effectiveness of short term trainings in improving knowledge of\udhealth economics and application of economic way of thinking in policy research.\udMethods: The training focused to strengthen the capacity of public health practitioners to\uddesign and implement health policy and programmes especially for infectious diseases from\udhealth system and economic perspectives. We focused to measure the effects of gaining\udknowledge to understand the relationship between infectious diseases and poverty and to\udadopt a logical way of thinking to come up with a solution. This approach used in this paper\udto measure the “reflection” of the training is different from conventional way of evaluating\udtraining programmes. The effectiveness of the training was measured in three dimensions:\ud(i) general understanding of economics from health policy perspective; (ii) application of\udeconomic analysis and appraisal tools and techniques; and (iii) economic way of thinking for\udissues related to disease control and poverty.\udResults: There was a significant improvement in self-assessed knowledge after the training.\udAmong seven knowledge related questions, in the pre-test, an average participant made 86%\udcorrect answers while in post-test, this figure increased to 100%. The results showed that there\udis a significant improvement in these three dimensions after the training intervention.\udConclusions: The paper concluded that endogenizing knowledge of economics and way of\udthinking have important implications for designing alternative policy and resource utilization