In April, a jury consisting of Wynand van de Ven, Owen O’Donnell and Eddy Van Doorslaer, considered six submissions that were submitted for the annual Eddy Van Doorslaer Research Excellence Award. These submissions consisted of published papers from junior members of the various groups within ESCHER. The jury selected the following paper as the winner 2024:
Francisca Vargas Lopes, Bastian Ravesteijn, Tom Van Ourti, Carlos Riumallo-Herl, Income inequalities beyond access to mental health care: a Dutch nationwide record-linkage cohort study of baseline disease severity, treatment intensity, and mental health outcomes, The Lancet Psychiatry, 10, 8, 2023, 588-597.
This article builds on the strong Rotterdam tradition of pathbreaking research on equity in healthcare that was initiated by Eddy Van Doorslaer. It is well written and is relevant for both the health economics literature and mental health care policy, in the Netherlands and beyond. It takes three leaps that advance the literature. First, it harnesses the power of linked administrative data that provide population coverage and detailed control for need, while reducing measurement error. Second, it delivers rare evidence on socioeconomic inequity in the underexplored area of mental healthcare. Third, it goes beyond the mere measurement of inequity in access to that care to provide detailed evidence of socioeconomic disparities, not only in the extent of treatment but also in the change in mental health following treatment. And last but not least: the results are startling. Poorer patients obtain less mental health care after adjusting for their greater need, and their mental health improves much less than that of richer patients.
Francisca will be offered the opportunity to host a sponsored event around the topic of her paper, which is yet to be scheduled.
- Researcher
- Professor