Economics and public health at CDC

Economics is the study of decisions--the incentives that lead to them and the consequences that result from them--as they relate to present and future production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services when resources are limited and have alternative uses. At CDC, economics is used to systematically identify, measure, value, and compare the costs and consequences of alternative prevention strategies. Costs and consequences in public health can be measured in various ways, including incidence or prevalence of disease; numbers of adverse events; utility measures, such as quality-adjusted life years; and monetary values. Because it deals with behavior, economics is not really about money at all. Money is just a convenient way to measure incentives and consequences.