Beate Sander

Beate Sander is a Canadian infectious disease economist based in Toronto, Ontario. She is an associate professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) at the University of Toronto,^[1] adjunct faculty member at the York University Department of Mathematics and Statistics and a member of its LAboratory of Mathematical Parallel Systems (LAMPS),^[2][3] director of Population Health Economics Research (PHER) at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute and its Toronto Health Economics and Technology Assessment Collaborative (THETA),^[2:1][4] a scientist at Public Health Ontario (PHO),^[4:1] and a member of the Modeling and Economics Research (ModERN) Network of the Canadian Immunization Research Network (CIRN).^[5]

Sander is a member of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI), where she also chairs the Economics Task Group and co-chairs the Economic Guidelines Task Group.^[6] During the declared COVID-19 pandemic, Sander was a member of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table (OST)^[7] and a member of Pandemics & Borders.^[8]

Sander is a member of the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) and the editorial board of its journal, Medical Decision Making.^[9] She is an associate of the Canadian Centre for Health Economics (CCHE)^[10] and a member of the Canadian Lyme Disease Research Network.^[11]

History

Sander has studied at academic institutions around the world, including the University of Toronto, Australian National University, Freiberg University of Mining and Technology, and Medizinische Fachschule Chemnitz.^[1:1]

Sander led a study published in April 2010 titled “The Cost-Effectiveness of Ontario’s Universal Influenza Immunization Program,” which she credits as “the first study to provide evidence that a universal program is economically attractive in jurisdictions with influenza epidemiology and health care costs broadly similar to Ontario.”^[12] In a subsequent paper published July 2010, Sander and her co-authors concluded that “Ontario’s pandemic H1N1 immunization program was cost-effective as implemented.”^[13]

In 2012, Sander joined the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) as an adjunct scientist.^[4:2]

Sander served as vice president of the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) in 2017-2018.^[14]

On April 1, 2019, Sander became the Canada Research Chair in Economics of Infectious Diseases, affiliated with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the University of Toronto.^[15]

Sander reported no conflicts of interest in a July 9, 2019 disclosure for the Canadian Lyme Disease Research Network.^[16]

Sander received a $248,789 grant through ICES from the Connaught Fund for 2019-2021 for a project titled, “The benefits of pneumococcal vaccination for seniors: a Centre for Vaccine Preventable Diseases interdisciplinary project on healthy aging and immunization science.”^[4:3]

COVID-19

Sander served in several key roles during the declared COVID-19 pandemic in Canada, including as a member of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table (OST) and the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI).^[7:1][6:1] Sander received reimbursement to attend NACI meetings, and acknowledged this role presented a conflict of interest with her work on the OST (including regarding COVID-19 vaccines).^[6:2]

Beate received funding from the Ontario COVID-19 Rapid Research Fund as principal investigator for an “Ontario Together” study through the University Health Network titled “Ontario’s Response to COVID-19: Balancing Trade-offs and Improving Outcomes for all Ontarians.”^[17]

The CIHR provided her a grant as Co-Investigator for “Scalable, Customizable, Digital Health Communication Materials to Help Canada Address the COVID-19 Pandemic” at Witteman Lab.^[18]

Beate received a grant from the Canadian Cardiovascular Society's COVID-19 Challenge for Canada Initiative for a study titled “Co-Investigator Consequences of delays in cardiac procedures and surgeries due to the COVID-19 pandemic.” Additional funding came from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and ICES.^[19]

Sander participated in a December 26, 2020 SMDM webinar in which she delivered a talk titled “Ensemble Modelling to Inform COVID-19 Policy Response.”^[20][21] She was elected president of the SMDM for 2021-2022.^[22]

Sander was interviewed in December 2021 for the Toronto Star on the subject of the Omicron variant.^[23]

Activities

Sander's research is focused on “developing economic strategies to evaluate interventions to combat infectious and vector-borne diseases.” She and her team “are addressing challenges in the use of costing data in economic evaluations, the need for disease-specific and comprehensive simulation models, and the broader societal impact of infectious diseases and their interventions.”^[15:1]

Additional areas of interest include “Economic evaluation of health care interventions with a focus on public health, decision analysis, health economics, mathematical modeling, use of laboratory, surveillance, and administrative data for economic evaluation, public health, vaccine-preventable diseases.”

Sander is principal investigator of several multidisciplinary projects funded by CIHR and other funders, including an evaluation of Zika virus and COVID-19 interventions using computer simulation.

The CIHR has awarded Sander the following grants:^[1:2]

• 2013-2015: $45,000.00 as PI for “Assessing the health and economic burden of mycobacterial infections using laboratory and health administrative data.”
• 2013-2016: $474,627.00 as PI for “Estimating longitudinal healthcare cost for infectious diseases using administrative data.”
• 2014: $15,000.00 as co-PI for “The Cost-Effectiveness of Integrated Cervical Cancer Prevention Strategies in Ontario.”
• 2014-2015: $99,000.00 as PI for “Assessing the health and economic burden of Lyme disease using laboratory and health administrative data.” One collaborator is Samir Patel, a co-OST member and Chief of Microbiology at Public Health Ontario.
• 2014-2017: $450,000.00 as PI for “The cost-effectiveness of West Nile virus intervention strategies. A computer simulation model.”
• 2014-2018: $475,367.00 as co-primary investigator for “Reducing the burden of hospital-associated Clostridium Difficile infections in Canada through optimal prevention policies: A multidisciplinary individual-based modeling approach.”

Sander has also received funding from the Canadian Immunization Research Network) (CIRN), Ontario Health, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) and the World Health Organization (WHO).^[6:3][24]

Sander received unrestricted funding to serve as a consultant to Roche for work on Tamiflu, as well as travel grants and honoraria for speaking at meetings on pandemic influenza mitigation strategies.^[12:1] She also received a $2,500.00 award from Sanofi for Communicable Disease Epidemiology.^[1:3]

Publications

• April 6, 2010: “Economic Appraisal of Ontario's Universal Influenza Immunization Program: A Cost-Utility Analysis”
  • Published in PLoS Medicine
  • Co-authored with Allison McGeer and Jeff Kwong
  • Funded by ICES, PHAC, and the University of Toronto
• July 17, 2010: “Is a mass immunization program for pandemic (H1N1) 2009 good value for money? Evidence from the Canadian Experience”
  • Published in Vaccine
  • Co-authored with Allison McGeer and David Fisman
  • Funded by the CIHR

External links

• Campfire Wiki
• Google Scholar
• LinkedIn
• X