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Profiles

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

  1. Beate Sander. Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation; University of Toronto. Retrieved January 20, 2022, from https://web.archive.org/web/20220120172213/https://ihpme.utoronto.ca/faculty/beate-sander/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Beate Sander. UHN Research. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from https://www.uhnresearch.ca/researcher/beate-sander ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. Members of LAMPS. LAboratory of Mathematical Parallel Systems. Retrieved March 11, 2022, from http://archive.today/2022.03.11-023510/http://www.lamps.yorku.ca/people ↩︎

  4. Beate Sander - Biography. Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES). Retrieved March 10, 2022, from http://archive.today/2022.03.11-001513/https://www.ices.on.ca/About-ICES/ICES-Scientists/S/Beate-Sander/Bio ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  5. Researchers. CIRN | Canadian Immunization Research Network. Retrieved April 22, 2022, from http://archive.today/2022.04.22-083152/https://cirnetwork.ca/about-us/researchers/ ↩︎

  6. Sander, B. (2020). Declaration of Interest. Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. https://web.archive.org/web/20220108230014/https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Declaration-of-Interest_Science-Table_Beate-Sander.pdf ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  7. About Us. Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/about/#sander-beate ↩︎ ↩︎

  8. Beate Sander. Pandemic & Borders. Retrieved September 11, 2024, from https://web.archive.org/web/20240911063152/https://www.pandemics-borders.org/team/beate-sander ↩︎

  9. Editorial Board: Medical Decision Making. SAGE Journals. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from http://archive.today/2022.03.11-020416/https://journals.sagepub.com/editorial-board/MDM ↩︎

  10. Associates. Canadian Centre for Health Economics - Centre Canadien En Economie de La Santé. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from https://www.canadiancentreforhealtheconomics.ca/about/associates/ ↩︎

  11. Meet The Team. Canadian Lyme Disease Research Network. Retrieved November 26, 2021, from http://archive.today/2021.11.26-061157/https://www.clydrn.ca/meet-the-team/ ↩︎

  12. Sander, B., Kwong, J. C., Bauch, C. T., Maetzel, A., McGeer, A., Raboud, J. M., & Krahn, M. (2010). Economic Appraisal of Ontario’s Universal Influenza Immunization Program: A Cost-Utility Analysis. PLoS Medicine, 7(4), e1000256. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000256 ↩︎ ↩︎

  13. Sander, B., Bauch, C. T., Fisman, D., Fowler, R. A., Kwong, J. C., Maetzel, A., McGeer, A., Raboud, J., Scales, D. C., Gojovic, M. Z., & Krahn, M. (2010). Is a mass immunization program for pandemic (H1N1) 2009 good value for money? Evidence from the Canadian Experience. Vaccine, 28(38), 6210–6220. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2010.07.010 ↩︎

  14. Introducing the SMDM 2017 - 2018 Officers and Trustees. Society for Medical Decision Making. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from http://archive.today/2022.03.10-235859/https://smdm.org/news/detail/2017-2018-officers-and-trustees ↩︎

  15. Beate Sander. (2021, June 25). Canada Research Chairs. http://archive.today/2022.03.10-224711/https://www.chairs-chaires.gc.ca/chairholders-titulaires/profile-eng.aspx?profileId=5024 ↩︎ ↩︎

  16. Sander, B. (2019). Disclosure of Conflict of Interest Definitions. Canadian Lyme Disease Research Network. https://web.archive.org/web/20210509002642/https://www.clydrn.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Sander-Beate.pdf ↩︎

  17. Ontario COVID-19 Rapid Research Fund. Government of Ontario. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from http://archive.today/2022.03.11-025145/https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-covid-19-rapid-research-fund ↩︎

  18. Parent, E. Scalable, Customizable, Digital Health Communication Materials to Help Canada Address the COVID19 Pandemic. Witteman Lab. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from http://archive.today/2022.03.11-030504/https://lab.witteman.ca/c19comms/ ↩︎

  19. Tam, D. Y., Qiu, F., Manoragavan, R., Fremes, S. E., Hassan, A., Ko, D. T., Lauck, S. B., Naimark, D., Ouzounian, M., Sander, B., Sun, L., & Wijeysundera, H. C. (2021). The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Cardiac Procedure Wait List Mortality in Ontario, Canada. Canadian Journal of Cardiology, 37(10), 1547–1554. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cjca.2021.05.008 ↩︎

  20. Society For Medical Decision Making. (2020, December 6). Lessons to Serve a Growing Purpose of Economic Evaluation in the U.S. in the 2020s. YouTube. https://web.archive.org/web/20220310235022/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mFqVJEOBgg ↩︎

  21. Distance Learning Educational Events. Society for Medical Decision Making. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from http://archive.today/2022.03.10-234925/https://smdm.org/hub/page/distance-learning-educational-events/education-career-tools ↩︎

  22. SMDM 2021 - 22 Officers & Trustees Election Results. Society for Medical Decision Making. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from http://archive.today/2022.03.10-234542/https://smdm.org/news/detail/smdm-2021-22-officers-trustees-election-results ↩︎

  23. Arthur, B. (2021, December 10). Opinion | It’s hard to look this in the eye. But COVID’s worst is coming. The Toronto Star. http://archive.today/2021.12.11-035323/https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2021/12/10/its-hard-to-look-this-in-the-eye-but-covids-worst-is-coming.html?rf ↩︎

  24. Sander, B. (2021). Declaration of Interest. Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. https://web.archive.org/web/20220309073247/https://covid19-sciencetable.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Declaration-of-Interest_Science-Table_Beate-Sander-1.pdf ↩︎