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1. Admissions/ Management Information
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Title of the programme – including any lower awards
Please provide the titles used for all awards relating to this programme. Note: all programmes are required to have at least a Postgraduate Certificate exit award.

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Masters MSc Health Economics
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Postgraduate Diploma N/APlease indicate if the Postgraduate Diploma is available as an entry point, ie. is a programme on which a student can register, is an exit award, ie. is only available to students exiting the masters programme early, or both.N/A
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Postgraduate Certificate PGCert Health EconomicsPlease indicate if the Postgraduate Certificate is available as an entry points, ie. is a programme on which a student can register, is an exit award, ie. is only available to students exiting the masters programme early, or both.Exit
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Level of qualificationLevel 7
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This document applies to students who commenced the programme(s) in:2021
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Awarding institutionTeaching institution
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Unviersity of York University of York
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Department(s):
Where more than one department is involved, indicate the lead department		Board of Studies
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Lead Department Economics and Related StudiesGSB in Economics
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Other contributing Departments:
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Route code
(existing programmes only)		PMHEASECO1
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Admissions criteria
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You should have at least a relevant 2:1 degree in economics, or a related discipline. We also consider degrees in other subjects, including medicine, pharmacy, and nursing. If you have a limited background in economics we offer a five-week Summer Session in microeconomics and quantitative methods
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Length and status of the programme(s) and mode(s) of study
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ProgrammeLength (years/ months) Status (full-time/ part-time)
Please select		Start dates/months
(if applicable – for programmes that have multiple intakes or start dates that differ from the usual academic year)		Mode
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Face-to-face, campus-basedDistance learningOther
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MSc Health Economics1 yearFull-timeN/APlease select Y/NYesPlease select Y/NNoFor academic year 2021/22, the department will provide an online alternative to students who cannot attend due to travel restrictions, personal or medical reasons, or who may be required to isolate on a shorter-term basis due to COVID-19.
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Language(s) of study
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English
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Language(s) of assessment
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English
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2. Programme accreditation by Professional, Statutory or Regulatory Bodies (PSRB)
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2.a. Is the programme recognised or accredited by a PSRB
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Please Select Y/N: Noif No move to section 3
if Yes complete the following questions
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3. Additional Professional or Vocational Standards
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Are there any additional requirements of accrediting bodies or PSRB or pre-requisite professional experience needed to study this programme?
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Please Select Y/N: Noif Yes, provide details
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4. Programme leadership and programme team
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4.a. Please name the programme leader for the year to which the programme design applies and any key members of staff responsible for designing, maintaining and overseeing the programme.
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Luigi Siciliani
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5. Purpose and learning outcomes of the programme
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5.a. Statement of purpose for applicants to the Masters programme
Please express succinctly the overall aims of the programme as an applicant facing statement for a prospectus or website. This should clarify to a prospective masters student why they should choose this programme, what it will provide to them and what benefits they will gain from completing it.
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This MSc has been running since 1978 at the University of York, where the discipline of health economics has been pioneered. York received the Queen's Anniversary Prize in recognition of its outstanding work at world-class level. Studying for a Health Economics MSc at York means you will be joining a programme with an international reputation for excellence, with over 850 alumni around the world. Taught by world-leading experts, the course provides a comprehensive training in the theory and practice of Health Economics that will bring you to the frontiers of research. It will equip you with the experience and leading-edge skills needed for a career in research and health service decision-making. Upon completion, you will be able to apply key and advanced concepts and principles in the core areas of health economics and evaluation of health care. Graduates go on to work in government departments, research units, universities, national health services and health care organisations, and the pharmaceutical industry. Summer placements give you the opportunity to carry out research in the field under the supervision of an experienced health economist. Most students do a three-month summer placement which is spent preparing an 8-10,000 word dissertation under the supervision of an experienced health economist. The placements involve the cooperation of many different institutions including academic research units, the NHS, consultancy and pharmaceutical companies. Most students are based in the UK but over recent years there have been placements in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain and the USA.
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5.b.i. Programme Learning Outcomes - Masters
Please provide six to eight statements of what a graduate of the Masters programme will be able to do.
If the document only covers a Postgraduate Certificate or Postgraduate Diploma please specify four to six PLO statements in the sections 5.b.ii and 5.b.iii as appropriate.
Taken together, these outcomes should capture the distinctive features of the programme. They should also be outcomes for which progressive achievement through the course of the programme can be articulated, and which will therefore be reflected in the design of the whole programme.
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PLOOn successful completion of the programme, graduates will be able to:
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1Critically apply core and advanced concepts in the areas of health economics and evaluation of health care.
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2Understand and make use of specialised knowledge on theory and methods used by professional health economists and active researchers, including: the role of observation, abstraction and model construction; the nature and sources of socioeconomic data; the major current research methods; and, the key analytical arguments used in health economics.
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3Formulate and solve analytical and decision problems by identifying the appropriate methodology and adapting it for context; in so doing, displaying general analytical skills in relation to identifying key objectives and assumptions, and avoiding logical inconsistencies.
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4Demonstrate an interdisciplinary approach to interpreting empirical evidence by drawing on range of methodologies across health and economics.
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5Model phenomena relevant to health economics by accessing and handling complex economic data sets, analysing these data using best-practice econometrics, and utilising econometric software for parameter estimation and hypothesis testing.
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6Advise key stakeholders by evaluating and interpreting phenomena and events, evaluating policy developments across different countries, and appraising them through core concepts and related empirical evidence.
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7Work independently to research and develop ideas within a formal framework and to communicate findings effectively.
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5.c. Explanation of the choice of Programme Learning Outcomes
Please explain your rationale for choosing these PLOs in a statement that can be used for students (such as in a student handbook). Please include brief reference to:
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i) ... in what way will these PLOs result in an ambitious, challenging programme which stretches the students?
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The PLOs reflect the ambitious aim of the programme, which is to equip students with skills at the research frontier of health economics for working as a health economist within and outside the academia (eg pharceutical companies). The programme and modules offered present a high standard of tuition which is competitive against the best competitor programmes in the UK and around the world. PLO1 and PLO2 are explit that they will bring students on the research frontier. The programme covers a lot of ground in the three core modules, and student find challanging to absorb a large amount of new material, methods, and knowledge. PLO3 is challanging on the technical side in relation to economic evaluation techniques, and PLO5 in relation to econometric methods.                                               
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ii) ... in what way will these PLOs produce a programme which is distinctive and advantageous to the student?
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Taught by word-leading experts, the programme provides a comprehensive training in the theory and practice of Health Economics and will equip you with the experience and leading-edge skills needed for a career in research and health service decision-making.  The programme is distinctive because it brings together many health economics experts who give lectures on the topic they are expert on (research-led teaching) thanks to the great concentration of health economists in York, and who are willing to teach in the programme.
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iii) ... how the design of the programme enables students from diverse entry routes to transition successfully into the programme? For example, how does the organisation of the programme ensure solid foundations in disciplinary knowledge and understanding of conventions, language skills, mathematics and statistics skills, writing skills, lab skills, academic integrity
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Both the microeconomics and the econometrics modules are designed to introduce concepts gradually. The flexibility in choosing the core modules also ensures that students with different background have a suitable entry point. Students have Evaluation of Health Care in the Autumn Term since this module uses less advanced maths, while the Health Economics module in the Spring Term covers different areas of health economics which require more mathematical tools acquired in core modules in the Autumn Term. Students with non-economics background take summer courses in maths and statistics.

A special feature of the York graduate programme is the availability of the Summer Session for students who, in the opinion of the Graduate School, have the ability to successfully complete the one-year Masters programme, but whose background is not a first degree in economics or with a significant economics content. Such candidates may possess a relevant professional qualification, a degree in another social science, or a science or engineering degree with a high quantitative and analytical content. The Summer Session is also available as a free-standing course of instruction for any graduate interested in acquiring greater knowledge of economics and quantitative techniques. Some candidates have attending the Summer Session as a condition of their offer of a place on one of  our MSc programmes.

All MSc students have access to a mathematics and statistics review taught over a week before the programme starts to help reduce the impact of heterogeneity of background. An innovative element of the statistics review is the inclusion of a test that students can take before coming to York to help them identify areas they need to brush up on, a formative examination at the end of the review to serve as a diagnostic tool, and additional tutorial support for the first few weeks of the Autumn Term for those students who are likely to need the help. In addition, students are directed to the excellent service provided by the Maths Skills Centre to fill gaps in their mathematics and statistics background which they can access throughout their programme.

We work with CELT to provide bespoke English language training. We provide an intensive pre-sessional language course followed up with lectures, concentrated in the first half of the term, and one-on-one drop-in sessions through the rest of the Autumn Term. In addition, we have in place a well-received provision in which each student receives a two hour session each week for eight weeks in the Summer Term to develop the language skills they need to write a dissertation.
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iv) ... how the programme is designed to enable students to progress successfully - in a limited time frame - through to the end of the award? For example, the development of higher level research skills;  enabling students to complete an independent study module; developing competence and confidence in practical skills/ professional skills. See QAA masters characteristics doument http://www.qaa.ac.uk/en/Publications/Documents/Masters-Degree-Characteristics-15.pdf                                                                                                    
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In terms of health economics, students need to cover many topics which are equally important (this applies to Health Economics, and Evaluation of Health Care). For these modules the emphasis is not on progression but to ensure that the students have no gaps in core knowledge. In terms of progression, students have the the opportunity to apply the methods learned in Economic Evaluation during the practical module Clinical Decision Analysis, which has a technical component and students find challenging: the students need to progress to a certain critical level of knowledge in economic evaluation before being able to successfully apply it in modelling as part of  Clinical Decision Analysis. As mentioned, the microeconomics and the econemetrics modules are designed to introduce concepts gradually, progressing from basic to advanced concepts.
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v) ... how this programme (as outlined in these PLOs) will develop students’ digital literacy skills and how technology-enhanced learning will be used to support active student learning through peer/tutor interaction, collaboration and formative (self) assessment opportunities (reference could be made to such as blogging, flipped classroooms, response 'clickers' in lectures, simulations, etc).
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Students are taught a number of digital literacy skills through introduction to specific pieces of econometric statistical software (through achieving PLO5) and how to collect data suitable for study in health economics (PLO5). Students are encouraged to interrogate the library provided collections of academic journal articles (this is required in particular for PLO1, 2, and 4). For example, both Health Economics and Evaluation of Health Care have extensive reading lists, which students have to learn to manage and navigate (PLO1-4). Students have to give presentations as part of Health Economics and Evaluation of Health Care; the presentations are individual but students have to coordinate by deciding who presents what. They will interact with the lecturers, who in turn chair the sessions, and their peers who are encouraged to ask questions. Students receive feedback and observations on their presentations, including appropriateness of powerpoint content.  
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vi) ... how this programme (as outlined in these PLOs) will support and enhance the students’ employability (for example, opportunities for students to apply their learning in a real world setting)?
The programme's employablity objectives should be informed by the University's Employability Strategy:
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http://www.york.ac.uk/about/departments/support-and-admin/careers/staff/
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Upon completion, students will be able to apply key and advanced concepts and principles in the core areas of health economics and evaluation of health care that will bring graduates up to the current research frontier (PLO1-4). Graduates need these unique set of skills to go on to work in government departments, research units, universities, national health services and health care organisations, and the pharmaceutical industry. Summer placements give you the opportunity to carry out research in the field under the supervision of an experienced health economist (PLO5,6), which again is key to improve employability, networking and becoming familiar with a working environment.
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viii) ... how learning and teaching on the programme are informed and led by research in the department/ Centre/ University?
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Several health economics modules (eg Health Economics, and Economic Evaluation of Health Care) involve lectures given by "expert in the field" on a given subject. Moreoever, all of the other modules offered to students on this programme are informed by the current research of academic staff in the Department of Economics. Staff offer insights into their own published research in lectures as well as providing advice in the dissertation process based on their own research experience and also specific research tools such as econometric methods or other modelling skills.                   
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5.d. Progression
For masters programmes where students do not incrementally 'progress' on the completion of a discrete Postgraduate Certificate and Postgraduate Diploma, please summarise students’ progressive development towards the achievement of the PLOs, in terms of the characteristics that you expect students to demonstrate at the end of the set of modules or part thereof. This summary may be particularly helpful to students and the programme team where there is a high proportion of option modules and in circumstances where students registered on a higher award will exit early with a lower one.

Note: it is not expected that a position statement is written for each masters PLO, but this can be done if preferred.
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On completion of modules sufficient to obtain a Postgraduate Certificate students will be able to:
If the PG Cert is an exit award only please provide information about how students will have progressed towards the diploma/masters PLOs. Please include detail of the module diet that students will have to have completed to gain this qualification as an exit award.
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To obtain the Postgraduate Certificate students need to complete at least 60 credits of taught modules. Any such combination of taught modules available as part of the MSc in Health Economics meets the PLOs for the Postgraduate Certificate. By the completion of the Certificate students will not have achieved PLO 7, but will have achieved the essential elements of PLOs 1 to 6, although their skills and depth of understanding of the material will be substantially lower as compared with students who complete the full MSc programme.
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On completion of modules sufficient to obtain a Postgraduate Diploma students will be able to:
If the PG Diploma is an exit award only please provide information about how students will have progressed towards the masters PLOs. Please include detail of the module diet that students will have to have completed to gain this qualification as an exit award.
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NA
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6. Reference points and programme regulations
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6.a. Relevant Quality Assurance Agency benchmark statement(s) and other relevant external reference points
Please state relevant reference points consulted (e.g. Framework for Higher Education Qualifications, National Occupational Standards, Subject Benchmark Statements or the requirements of PSRBs): See also Taught Postgraduate Modular Scheme: Framework for Programme Design:
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6.b. University award regulations
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The University’s award and assessment regulations apply to all programmes: any exceptions that relate to this programme are approved by University Teaching Committee and are recorded at the end of this document.
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7. Programme Structure
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7.a. Module Structure and Summative Assessment Map
Please complete the summary table below which shows the module structure and the pattern of summative assessment through the programme.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
If the structure of your programme does not fit the usual academic year (for instance students start at the beginning of September or in January) please contact your Academic Quality Team contact in the Academic Support Office for guidance on how to represent the structure in an alternative format.

To clearly present the overall programme structure, include the name and details of each invidual CORE module in the rows below. For OPTION modules, ‘Option module’ or 'Option from list x' should be used in place of specifically including all named options. If the programme requires students to select option modules from specific lists by term of delivery or subject theme these lists should be provided in the next section (7.b).

From the drop-down select 'S' to indicate the start of the module, 'A' to indicate the timing of each distinct summative assessment point (eg. essay submission/ exam), and 'E' to indicate the end of teaching delivery for the module (if the end of the module coincides with the summative assessment select 'EA'). It is not expected that each summative task will be listed where an overall module might be assessed cumulatively (for example weekly problem sheets).

Summative assessment by exams should normally be scheduled in the spring week 1 and summer Common Assessment period (weeks 5-7). Where the summer CAP is used, a single ‘A’ can be used within the shaded cells as it is understood that you will not know in which week of the CAP the examination will take place. (NB: An additional resit assessment week is provided in week 10 of the summer term for postgraduate students. See Guide to Assessment, 5.4.a)
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Full time structure
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CreditsModuleAutumn TermSpring Term Summer Term Summer Vacation
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CodeTitle12345678910123456789101234567891012345678910111213
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10ECO00006MClinical Decision AnalysisSEA
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20ECO00026MHealth EconomicsSEA
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20Various Core List ASEA
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20Various Core List BSEA
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20ECO00015MEvaluation of Health CareSEA
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10Various Option Modules from List CSEA
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80ECO00012MDissertationSEA
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Core List ACore List BOption List COption List D
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 10c Applied Microeconomics 1 AUT & 10c Econometrics 1 AUT &
10c Advanced Macroeconomics AUT
n/a
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 10c Applied Microeconomics 2 SPR 10c Applied Microeconometrics SPR & SUM WK 210c Management Decision Analysis AUT
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 20c Advanced Microeconomics AUT & SPR
20c Econometrics 1 & 2 AUT & SPR
10c Public Sector Economics: Microeconomic Applications AUT
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20c Econometric Methods for Research AUT & SPR
10c Applied Microeconometrics SPR & SUM WK 2
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20c Statistics and Econometrics AUT & SPR
10c Design and Analysis of Mechanisms and Institutions SPR
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 10c Evaluation of Health Policy SPR
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 10c Health and Development SPR
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 10c International Macroeconomics SPR & SUM WK 1
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10c Project Appraisal SPR
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 10c Public Finance SPR
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7.c. Explanation of the programme and assessment design
The statements should be in a form that can be used for students (such as in a student handbook). It should make clear to students why they are doing the key activities of the programme, in terms of reaching the PLOs.
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i) Students’ independent study and formative work Please outline how independent study and student work has been designed to support the progressive achievement of the programme learning outcomes (for example, the use of online resources which incorporate formative feedback; opportunities for further learning from work-based placements).
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Independent study is mostly based around background reading of mostly academic journal articles and some text books and then the preparation of formative work, and subsequently the preparation for summative assessment. So its format and content largely reflect the format and content of those assessments, while supported by staff contact, both timetabled and non-timetabled. The type of formative work varies, primarily according to the subject matter of the module. Much of it is on-line oriented to the extent that reading resources are identified and delivered on-line and through the VLE. In most modules the main formative coursework is centred on regular seminar or other meetings. Mostly the format is couched in terms of problem solving where the problem sets are reviewed in the seminar. For health related modules, extended essays (which also describe analytical methods) are common. The presumption for this level of students is that they will engage in more background reading and self-study than undergraduates reflecting the increased academic maturity of the MSc students.                                             
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ii) Contact with staff
Please explain how the programme’s design maximises the value of students’ contact time with staff (which may be face-to-face, virtual, synchronous or asynchronous), including through the use of technology-enhanced learning. For example, giving students resources for their independent study which then enables a class to be more interactive with a greater impact on learning.
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Contact with staff is primarily designed to support students in their understanding of lecture material, formative work, and independent study, and in their preparation for summative assessment. The main form of timetabled content is lectures to all students taking the module, in parallel with small group seminars. Many MSc modules are quite small in student number and so lectures also take on some features of seminars in that it is more practical for students to raise questions during lectures than when the group is large. Lectures are designed to provide students with the structure of the subject area and the core knowledge. Seminars are based around the review, presentation, and discussion of formative coursework, which students are expected to prepare in advance, and some of which is submitted for feedback from the seminar tutor. The additional academic maturity of MSc students is reflected in the more open-ended nature of the work given and of their expected response to the reading list associated with any module. In addition to timetabled contact, all lecturers and tutors provide further and continued informal support, normally in the form of drop-in office hours. The dissertation is supported through an Introductory lecture, a lecture on Data Resources and Econometric Software, and a workshop facilitated by the Library on Information Sources for Your Dissertation.
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iii) Summative Assessment
Please outline how summative assessment within and across modules has been designed to support and evidence the progressive achievement of the programme learning outcomes. (For example, the use of different assessment methods at the ‘introduction’ stage compared to those used to evaluate deeper learning through the application of skills and knowledge later in the programme).
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Summative assessment in each module is designed to test the progress made by the student, through studying that module, towards achieving the Programme Learning Outcomes. The main type of summative assessment used is the 24 hour open book exam, although some modules use other types such as project, computer practical or workshop presentations, sometimes singly or in groups. We have some option modules, which are popular for health economics students, such as Health and Development, and Evaluation of Health Policy, whose summative assessment is through an extended essay. This introduces a diversity in the assessment methods. The process of writing the dissertation culminates in a 10,000 word report which is assessed by the health economists in the department.