Advisory Board

  • Prof. Martin Knapp (chair)
    London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom

    Martin Knapp is Professor of Social Policy and Director of the Personal Social Services Research Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is also Director of the School for Social Care Research, a position he has held since the School was established by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) in 2008. His research interests stretch beyond the life-course – from pre-birth to post-death – and are mainly in the areas of social care, mental health and autism. Much of his work uses economic arguments and evidence to inform policy discussion and influence practice development. Within PECUNIA, Martin chairs the Scientific Advisory Board, in which role he hopes to draw on his experience in the mental health economics field, including links from research into policy and practice debate.

    Publications
  • Prof. Jennifer Beecham (retired)
    University of Kent /Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU), United Kingdom

    Jennifer Beecham was Professor of Health and Social Care Economics and Deputy Director at the PSSRU University of Kent, and also Professorial Research Fellow at the PSSRU London School of Economics and Political Science. Professor Beecham has led the Unit Costs programme, which generates the annual Unit Costs of Health and Social Care volumes, and the Services for Children and Young People research programme. Her research included evaluations of services for children and adults with needs related to age, mental health problems, intellectual disabilities and a range of other conditions that cross ‘traditional' boundaries between psychiatric, education, criminal justice, health care and social care services. With a colleague, she developed the Client Service Receipt Inventory to support economic evaluation (www.pssru.ac.uk/csri/client-service-receipt-inventory/).

    Professor Beecham was member of the PECUNIA Scientific Advisory Board in 2018 and 2019. Her contribution to the project was through her long and in-depth experience in economic evaluation, particularly in estimating and analysing unit costs for services and individuals.

    Publications
  • Prof. János Kálmán
    University of Szeged, Hungary

    Professor and Chair of the Psychiatry Department (178 beds) of Faculty of Medicine, University of Szeged (Szeged, Hungary). He is the elected president of the Hungarian Alzheimer’s Association. His main interest includes biological psychiatry, psychopharmacology, gerontopsychiatry with special focus on Alzheimer’s and related neurocognitive disorders. He published 8 book chapters, and 175 peer-reviewed papers, IF >300, >1700 citation, Hirsch Index: 25. He has one research-related patent: Speech Gap Test (S-GAP) 2017, a language-based screening tool for mild neurocognitive impairment. Currently he is working on the development of a database system, a schizophrenia registry for clinical and research purposes. As a Scientific Advisory Board Member in the PECUNIA project he can help to the different research teams to design and define the scientific targets to find the proper outcome measures and to evaluate the clinical relevance of their results. János can also help with his expertise to write and summarize the result of the scientific research and to integrate the theoretical data to clinical settings.

    Publications
  • Dr Ingrid Zechmeister-Koss
    HTA Austria - Austrian Institute for Health Technology Assessment GmbH, Austria

    Ingrid Zechmeister-Koss is working as a Head of health economics & health services research at HTA Austria - Austrian Institute for Health Technology Assessment GmbH. Before joining the HTA Austria she was working at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Health Technology Assessment as the deputy director. Her research focuses primarily on health economics with a focus on mental health economics. After a Master in ‘Health Studies and Management’ at the University of Brighton she was a research assistant at the Vienna University of Economics and Business where she completed her doctorate study. Apart from the LBI-HTA she worked in other Austrian research institutes (Austrian Academy of Sciences, European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research). She also worked for a health care provider in the field of biomedical sciences and as a health economist in health care administration (pharmacoeconomics at the Austrian Social Insurance). Additionally, she has been a lecturer in a number of Austrian Bachelor and Master courses in the field of health economics and health policy. Based on her experience with economic evaluation and health technology assessment in the Austrian decision making context Ingrid will provide feedback on how to link the results from PECUNIA to decision making. Additionally, she will feed in her methodological expertise on economic evaluation.

    Publications
  • Dr Antoni Dedeu Baraldés
    WHO European Office for Primary Health Care, United Kingdom

    Dr Dedeu is working as Senior Expert at WHO European Office for Primary Health Care. He is the former Interim CEO of the International Foundation for Integrated Care (IFIC)and former Director the Agency for Health Quality and Assessment of Catalonia (AQuAS), Ministry of Health of the government of Catalonia. Dr Dedeu is a MD (University of Barcelona), specialised in Urology and Family Medicine and he has postgraduate studies in Health Economics, Primary Care and Healthcare Management at the universities Autònoma of Barcelona (UAB), Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Spain and U Manchester in the UK. He has a professional experience of more than 20 years at the international level in the field of quality assurance and health systems development. He has participated in projects in the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and South East Asia in health care reforms and in the establishment of the Health Technology Agency in Ukraine. He has collaborated over a period of 15 years to several international organizations, from WHO and the European Commission. Currently, he is Chair of EUREGHA (European Association of Regional and Local Authorities) based in Brussels.

    Publications
  • PD Dr Christiane Roick
    Federal Association of the Allgemeine Ortskrankenkassen (AOK-Bundesverband), Germany

    Christiane Roick is assistant head of the medical department at the Federal Association of the AOK, the political umbrella organisation of the AOK system. The AOK system is a statutory health insurance fund, covering the health insurance of 25 million people, close to a third of the German population. She is also visiting scientist and lecturer for health care and health economics at the Institute of Social Medicine, Occupational Health and Public Health at the Medical Faculty, University of Leipzig. With her expertise in the German health care system, in mental health care, health economic research and the analysis of secondary data Christiane supports the PECUNIA project as scientific advisor.

    Publications
  • Prof. José Miguel Caldas de Almeida
    Lisbon Institute of Global Mental Health (LIGMH), Portugal

    José Miguel Caldas de Almeida is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Mental Health at the NOVA Medical School, NOVA University of Lisbon. He was the Chief of the Mental Health Unit at the Pan American Health Organization, the Regional Office of the World Health Organization for the Americas, in Washington D.C. (2000-2005), and leader of the EU Joint Action for Mental Health and Wellbeing (2013-2016). He was Director of National Mental Health Services in Portugal, between 1988 and 1990, and Coordinator of the National Mental Health Plan from 2007 to 2011. Currently he is the President of Lisbon Institute of Global Mental Health. He worked for many years on mental health policy and services research and in the planning and financing issues of mental health services implementation in various regions of the world.

  • Miia Männikkö
    European Federation of Associations of Families of People with Mental Illness (EUFAMI), Belgium

    Miia Männikkö is EUFAMI President since May 2016 and has been member of the Board of Directors since 2012. She is a teacher and researcher in the field of social psychology. Her research interests and expertise lie in peer training and empowerment programmes in mental health. Miia has experience from a project which developed support methods for children of parents with mental ill health and for the whole family – such as peer support groups, educational courses for the whole family, books for children and education for social and health care professionals, enabling them to support the whole family if one of the members is affected by mental ill health. EUFAMI supports family members of people affected by mental ill health - young carers and children too. Miia served as Executive Manager, Development manager, Project manager and President in Finnish and European family associations.

  • Prof. Jan van Busschbach
    Chairman EuroQol –Board and Head Section Medical Psychology and Psychotherapy Erasmus MC (EMC), Netherlands

    Prof. Dr Jan Busschbach, PhD holds a chair on ‘health related quality of life’, and leads the section ‘Medical Psychology and Psychotherapy’ of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam. Jan Busschbach is the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) expert of the National Health Insurance Advisory Board (ACP), the committee that syntheses and evaluate all scientific evidence and other arguments for nationwide reimbursement by the Minister of Health. He is also holds a position at the Viersprong Institute for studies on Personality Disorders (VISPD). His scientific expertise is the integration of quality of life measurement into health policy and health economics. Jan Busschbach is the chair of the Executive Committee of the EuroQol Research Association and is involved several national validations of the EQ-5D-5L. This questionnaire is the most used quality of life questionnaire in health economics.

    Publications
  • Prof. John Geddes
    University of Oxford, United Kingdom

    Professor John Geddes is Head of the University of Oxford Department, Director of the NIHR Oxford Health Biomedical Research Centre, Director of the NIHR Oxford cognitive health Clinical Research Facility and Director of R&D at the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. As Head of Department, he has built scientific capacity, infrastructure, and collaborations, transforming Oxford’s research power in mental health and dementia. His own current research focuses on the development and evaluation of treatments for people with mood disorders. He has established large cohorts of patients, developed new approaches to self management and monitoring, and conducted clinical trials as well as influential research syntheses. By involving patients in research, his team has been able to characterize the nature of mood disorder more accurately. He has conducted several large randomised trials and research syntheses which have had major influence on clinical practice internationally. His current research aims to combine the power of large scale epidemiological methods with the precision of experimental medicine, translating insights into basic mechanisms of mood disorder to deliver innovative targets and therapies.

    Publications