Health care in the United States is a sticky wicket. Being able to maintain quality of care and affordability is the challenge. Here’s where the economists fit in.

“We can apply the fundamentals of economics—mathematics, statistics, and rigorous models—to the industry of health care, an area that is so interdisciplinary,” says Michael French, professor and director of the Department of Sociology’s Health Economics Research Group (HERG).

Each year, HERG faculty members often receive more than $1 million in grants from federal agencies to analyze the costs, benefits, organization, and delivery of health care and human services. Often partnering with colleagues University-wide, they research such topics as substance abuse, obesity, Medicare and managed care issues, emergency medicine, AIDS/HIV, and criminal justice. Prevention of disease through diet, screening, and other lifestyle behaviors, says French, has the highest potential to save lives and costs.

“A non-economist might say, ‘People don’t invest enough time or resources in preventive screening for disease or they engage too often in risky behaviors,’” French says. “While that might be true, as economists we believe we can change programs and behaviors through a combination of incentives and penalties. There’s always a price or cost that will initiate change.”

French and his colleagues recently completed a study funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism that surveyed the effects of both alcohol and traffic safety policies on motorcycle crashes and fatalities from 1990 to 2004. The study suggests that blood-alcohol content limits could be lower for motorcyclists than for automobile drivers, given the additional agility and coordination required. It’s an example of how HERG research may play a role in shaping policy decisions.

The study of health care is a fairly new but growing specialization in economics. HERG took form in 1995, when French joined the University as an associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the medical school. This fall the University hosted the fourth annual conference of the Southeastern Health Economics Study Group, a consortium of health economists from institutions like Johns Hopkins, Duke, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale.