Format Requirements: There are no requirements for attendance.

Background: This short course is presented based on the experience of the course Director in over ten years of experience doing research for public and private sector entities aimed at promoting obesity interventions. Participants will gain insights into the types of research that have successfully been employed to convince public and private sector payers to fund select obesity interventions.

The course will provide a broad overview of the following types of research and applications related to obesity interventions:

• Burden of illness studies,
• Cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses, and
• Business case analyses.

Participants will come away from the course with

• An understanding of research methods that have been used to influence medical decision-makers
• A discussion of which public and private sector payers are most interested in which types of analyses.

This course is taught at an introductory level and is appropriate for those who wish to understand how best to use research to promote medical decision making. The format will be a mix of lecture and discussion based on real-life case studies. There are no prerequisites for participation. The course will be taught by Eric Finkelstein, PhD, and Marcel Bilger, PhD who are both faculty at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore.