MHE Seminar Series: Professor Lisa Prosser
Using Decision Sciences to Understand the Value of Vaccination against COVID-19 Illness in Children and Adults
Presenter: Professor Lisa Prosser
Bio: Dr. Prosser is the Marilyn Fisher Blanch Research Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health at the University of Michigan. She also currently serves as the Associate Vice President for Research-Health Sciences at the university level.
Dr. Prosser’s research focuses on measuring the value of childhood health interventions using methods of decision sciences and economics. Her work evaluating the cost-effectiveness of vaccination programs has been used in setting national vaccine policy for children and adults in the US setting. Her work with the Evidence Review Group for the US Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children used decision modelling to understand long-term health outcomes for proposed newborn screening
programs. She also leads The Valuation of Child Health Initiative (VoCHI).
VoCHI is designed to advance novel research in methods for the economic evaluation of childhood health interventions. Primary areas of research include methods for valuing family spillover effects of illness, family wellbeing, methods of valuing quality of life in children, equity weighting for cost effectiveness analysis, and implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on valuation frameworks for health resource allocation.
Abstract: This seminar presents results from several ongoing studies of COVID-19
vaccination.
(1) A discrete choice experiment of combination influenza and COVID-19 vaccination. This presentations will report preliminary findings of the DCE, how preferences differ for adult and pediatric populations, and provides insights on design choices to best represent the risks and benefits of vaccination in the DCE context.
(2) Cost-effectiveness of vaccination against COVID-19 illness. This presentation will demonstrate the rapidly changing economic value of this vaccine over time – from cost-saving in the first year of vaccination (2021) to incremental cost-effectiveness ratios > $375,000/QALY for lower risk adults in the most recent analysis (2025). We will also discuss challenges of the evidence base associated with COVID-19 illness and vaccination in
the context of modelling economic outcomes.
When: Wednesday January 28, 2026