Professor Karl Claxton (born 1 March 1967) is a

health economist Health economics is a branch of economics concerned with issues related to Health care efficiency, efficiency, effectiveness, value and behavior in the production and consumption of health and healthcare. Health economics is important in dete ...

at the

University of York The University of York (abbreviated as or ''York'' for Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a public Collegiate university, collegiate research university in York, England. Established in 1963, the university has expanded to more than thir ...

. He has a PhD in Economics, an MSc in Health Economics and a BA in Economics from the University of York. He was a

Harkness Fellow The Harkness Fellowship (previously known as the Commonwealth Fund Fellowship) is a program run by the Commonwealth Fund of New York City. This fellowship was established to reciprocate the Rhodes Scholarships and enable Fellows from several cou ...

at the

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school at Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. It was named after Hong Kong entrepreneur Chan Tseng-hsi in 2014 following a US$350 ...

and from 1999 until 2007 he held an adjunct appointment there as Assistant Professor of Health and Decision Sciences. He has been a member of the

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care (United Kingdom), Department of Health and Social Care. As the national health technolog ...

Appraisal Committee since 1999. He is the co-editor of the

Journal of Health Economics The ''Journal of Health Economics'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes articles about health economics and related fields concerning human health care and medicine. The journal is published six times annually by Elsevier. The edit ...

. He was described by the

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...

in 2015 as possibly the most dangerous man in economics for

pharmaceutical companies The pharmaceutical industry is a Medicine, medical industry that discovers, develops, produces, and markets pharmaceutical goods such as medications and medical devices. Medications are then administered to (or Self-medicate, self-administered b ...

, because his "work on the cost-effectiveness of medicines is influencing policy well beyond the UK". He was a joint author of a paper on the

Sustainable Development Goals The ''2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development'', adopted by all United Nations (UN) members in 2015, created 17 world Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The aim of these global goals is "peace and prosperity for people and the planet" – wh ...

published in

Nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

in July 2015. He says the Cancer Drugs Fund should be scrapped because the money would be better used on 21,000 patients with heart, lung and gastro-intestinal diseases who are denied cost-effective evidence-based treatment. He was the author of a report saying that the maximum threshold, currently around £30,000 a year used by

, for judging a medicine cost-effective should be more than halved. The report found that any intervention costing more than £13,000 per

Quality-adjusted life year The quality-adjusted life year (QALY) is a generic measure of disease burden, including both the quality and the quantity of life lived. It is used in economic evaluation to assess the value of medical interventions. One QALY equates to one yea ...

risked causing more harm than good by denying cost effective treatment to other patients.

Publications

Development goals should enable decision-making, Keith Shepherd, Douglas Hubbard, Norman Fenton, Karl Claxton, Eike Luedeling & Jan de Leeuw, Nature 8 July 2015

References

External links

Centre for Health Economics biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Claxton, Karl Health economists Academics of the University of York Alumni of the University of York British economists Living people 1967 births