
Jan Abel Olsen
Professor in health economics
Job description
Jan Abel Olsen is a Professor of Health Economics in the Department of Community Medicine, University of Tromsø, Norway. He is an adjunct professor in the Centre for Health Economics, Monash University, Australia and part time researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
Jan Abel has been visiting professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the University of York, and Bocconi University, Italy. He has published extensively in the leading health economics journals. His eclectic research interests include: valuation of health outcomes, equality and fairness, determinants of health and wellbeing, healthcare financing and incentives. Jan Abel enjoys teaching and has written three books in health economics.
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Research interests
- Priority setting: Efficiency and equity in healthcare
- Measuring and valuing health outcomes; Quality-adjusted-life-years (QALYs)
- Inequalities in health
- Regional variation in healthcare utilization
Current Research
- Multi Instrument Comparison of generic quality of life (QoL) instruments (Grant 221452 from The Research Council of Norway, and grant from the Australian NHMRC)
- Tracing causes of inequalities in health and well-being (Grant 273812 from The Research Council of Norway)
Teaching
HEL 3007 Health Economics and Policy
Lecture notes: Health economics 2020
- Lecture 1: Health & Healthcare
- Lecture 2a: Economics & Efficiency production
- Lecture 2b: Economics & Efficiency demand
- Lecture 2c: Economics & Efficiency HealthCare
- Lecture 3: Market Failures
- Lecture 4: Equality & Fairness
- Lecture 5: Determinants Overview
- Lecture 6-8: Determinants of health
- Lecture 9: Funding sources overview
- Lecture 10: Insurance model
- Lecture 11: Prepayment schemes
- Lecture 12: Patient payment
- Lecture 13: Healthcare delivery Overview
- Lecture 14: PrimaryCare
- Lecture 15: Secondary care
- Lecture 16: Unwarranted variations
- Lecture 17: Econ Eval Intro
- Lecture 18: Health Gains
- Lecture 18b: Health Gains in money terms
- Lecture 19: Costs CEA
- Lecture 20: Equity & Priority Setting
Member of research group
CV
Work address
Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Tromsø, 9037 Tromsø, Norway.
Education
PhD (Dr Philos), thesis: Some methodological issues in economic evaluation in health care, University of Tromsø (1994). MSc in Economic geography (1981), MA in Economics and business administration (1979), Norwegian School of Economics (NHH).
Current positions
- Professor of health economics and health services research (since 1999), in the Department of Community Medicine, University of Tromsø (UiT), Norway
- Adjunct Professor (since 2010), Centre for Health Economics, Monash University, Australia
- Part time researcher (since 2011), Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo
Previous positions
- 1980-81 Research associate, Department of Social Sciences, UiT
- 1982-85 Research associate, Department of Economics, UiT
- 1986-98 Associate professor, Department of Economics, UiT
- 1992-96 Adjunct Professor, Aberdeen University, Scotland
- 2004-06 Adjunct Professor, Bocconi University, Italy
- 2006-11 Adjunct Professor, University of Oslo, Norway
Research Fields
Measuring and valuing health outcomes; Efficiency vs equality trade-offs in health and healthcare; The relationship between health related quality of life (HRQoL) and subjective well-being (SWB); Tracing causes of inequalities in health and well-being; Health care financing
Books
- Olsen JA: Principles in Health Economics and Policy (2nd edition), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017
- Olsen JA: Helseøkonomi: Effektivitet og rettferdighet, Cappelen Akademisk Forlag, Oslo, 2006
- Dolan P, Olsen JA: Distributing health care: Economic and ethical issues, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002
- Also translated into Polish: Dystrybucja usług medycznych. Zagadnienia ekonomiczne i etyczne, CeDeWu, 2008
Publication profile
85 peer reviewed journal articles, of which two-thirds appear in level 2 journals (similar to A and A*) in the Norwegian Scientific Index (CRIStin). In most of this published work I have played a leading role, as signaled by being sole author (11), first author (16), or last author (44). My H-index: 40.
Teaching experience
Graduate courses at universities in Australia, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Russia, Tanzania, South Africa, UK.