Beate Sander

Beate Sander, RN MBA MEcDev PhD, is an internationally recognized leader in infectious disease economics with extensive expertise in health economics and simulation modeling. Dr. Sander holds a Canada Research Chair in Economics of Infectious Diseases. She is a Senior Scientist at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, where she directs the Population Health Economics Research (PHER) group, and holds appointments as Professor, IHPME, University of Toronto; and Adjunct Scientist at ICES and Public Health Ontario. Dr. Sander serves as President of the international Society for Medical Decision Making.

Dr. Sander’s research program in economics of infectious diseases addresses challenges to economic evaluation methods by advancing scientific methods for the economic evaluation of infectious disease interventions at the population level, while developing critical evidence to inform policy making in important disease areas. Her research encompasses the following domains:

1. Advancing economic evaluation by developing novel methods for a systems approach that identifies and optimizes intervention strategies across sectors, fully accounts for the health and economic impact, and considers equity.

2. Furthering the evaluation of the economic burden of diseases using health administrative data by addressing the unique challenges of infectious diseases.

3. Expanding the use of data-driven simulation as a tool to assess complex interventions and enable a systems approach to economic evaluation, drawing from multiple disciplines.

Dr. Sander contributes substantively to federal/provincial policy decision-making, serving as an expert to advisory bodies, including Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI), where she also chairs the Economics Task Group and the Economic Guidelines Task Group. She is serving as a Steering Committee Member for CIHR’s Centre for Research on Pandemic Preparedness and Health Emergencies and for EPIC (Emerging and Pandemic Infections Consortium). Dr. Sander co-chaired the Ontario COVID-19 Modeling Consensus Table and was a member of the Science Advisory Table.