Lucy Xiaolu Wang Wins International Health Economics Association Award

Lucy Xiaolu Wang, assistant professor in the Department of Resource Economics, has won the International Health Economics Association’s (IHEA) Adam Wagstaff prize for outstanding research on the economics of healthcare financing and delivery in low- and middle-income countries. The prize was awarded July 12 at IHEA’s 15th World Congress in Cape Town, South Africa. 

Wang’s award-winning paper, “Procurement Institutions and Essential Drug Supply in Low and Middle-Income Countries,” explores price, delivery and procurement lead time of drug supplies for major infectious diseases such as antiretrovirals, antimalarials, antituberculosis and antibiotics in more than 100 developing countries. She and co-author Nahim Bin Zahur of Queen’s University in Canada find that pooled procurement organizations can drive down costs, particularly when pooling occurs internationally and for older-generation drugs. One major international pooled procurement institution, the Pooled Procurement Mechanism, also reduces the likelihood of delivery delays, but at the cost of longer procurement lead times.

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The Wagstaff prize honors former IHEA President Adam Wagstaff, who served as research manager in the World Bank’s Development Research Group and, for two decades, as an associate editor of the Journal of Health Economics. It memorializes Wagstaff’s lifelong commitment to research that analyzes, promotes and monitors health system efficiency and equity in low- and middle-income countries and improves the health of the world’s most in-need populations.   

“As an early-career scholar, receiving this recognition from the largest organization in my field is encouraging, but also a reminder that there is a long way to go,” Wang says. “I hope to live up to the legacy of Adam Wagstaff and continue doing work in this field that can make a real difference to people.” 

Wang’s research focuses on the economics of innovation and digitization in healthcare markets, particularly in the biotech, pharmaceutical and digital-health industries. Growing up in the smallest city in China and often having to travel long distances for medical care and take medications of inappropriate dosing due to lack of supply sparked Wang’s interest in healthcare and how to improve drug access and delivery, particularly for under-resourced populations. 

As she works to publish her paper, Wang is also pursuing research related to patents and the global drug supply with a focus on China, where many generic drugs are manufactured. Another area of research examines the 10-year megaproject of the European Commission, the Human Brain Project, that marries neuroscience with AI. At UMass Amherst, Wang aspires to continue building the health economics cluster. 

In addition to her appointment at UMass, Wang is a faculty research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in Germany and a faculty associate at the Canadian Centre for Health Economics. She earned a doctorate in economics from Cornell University, a master’s degree in economics from Duke University and a bachelor’s degree in economics with a focus on insurance from Central University of Finance and Economics in China.