Pfizer Global Health Fellow: Andreas Kuznik
Accordia Pairs Pfizer Health Economist with IDI Doctors to Improve Reach and Efficiency of Care Delivery
Dr. Andreas Kuznik is an accomplished professional, published author, and is known globally as a leading health economist. But he describes his career path as “rather accidental.” Not a child with a clear professional calling, Dr. Kuznik was first introduced to economics as a student at the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC and ended up with a PhD focusing on health economics, outcomes research, and pharmoeconomics rather inadvertently. His first job as a post-doctoral fellow was at the University of Maryland doing health services research. From there he heard the calling to work for a pharmaceutical company and first joined Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and later Pfizer Inc. The work conducted in health economics within the pharmaceutical industry generally revolves around reimbursement, that is, governments across the world routinely evaluate the cost-effectiveness of new medications to determine whether the price is justified by the drug’s clinical profile and, thus, whether to reimburse this drug and make it available on national formularies. During his tenure at Pfizer, Dr. Kuznik has been involved in this process for some of Pfizer’s largest brands, including Lipitor, Eliquis, and Lyrica.
In 2011, Dr. Kuznik’s work on Lipitor, a cholesterol-lowering drug that was coming off patent, was winding down. He was searching for a transition to something else when he saw internal communication about the Global Health Fellows (GHF) program. Coincidentally, that year, there was a position related to cost-effectiveness research, and so he applied to the program on the spur of the moment.
Dr. Kuznik soon found himself flying to Uganda to work at the Infectious Diseases Institute at Makerere University in Kampala. He was selected by the GHF program to work with IDI’s head of research at that time, Dr. Yukari Manabe, to help improve the organization’s health economics activities. Over a period of six months, Dr. Kuznik trained small teams of staff on various aspects of health economic analyses. They got hands-on experience conducting practical research that helped to identify sound investments in healthcare. The team wrote up their findings and submitted articles to journals, getting four published, a notable feat in the short timeframe. “This is the ultimate measure of productivity in science,” said Dr. Kuznik. One of the IDI scientists who Dr. Kuznik mentored, Dr. Mohammed Lamorde, became so interested in this field that he shifted his focus toward health economics. The two have continued to collaborate, as the need for this work grows.
That “much more must be done” emerges as a major theme when Dr. Kuznik discusses ways for IDI to move forward. He believes that the institute should have a full-time health economist on staff, since evidence of cost-benefit relationships should help local ministries of health across sub-Saharan Africa or international donor organizations make decisions about how to invest increasingly scarce funds in healthcare programs. Beyond offering internal guidance, the findings of this research have been—and must continue to be—shared with government officials in Uganda who determine policy affecting the lives of millions of residents.
Dr. Kuznik considers his fellowship experience as one of the highlights of his professional career, because it helped him grow as a scientist to exposed to new therapeutic areas in infectious diseases that are not very prevalent in the developed world, because he worked with a highly motivated and well trained group of researchers on site, and because his early work is starting to impact not just in the scientific literature, but also local health care decision makers.
The strong ties Dr. Kuznik has maintained with IDI are evidence of his interest in advancing this research. He serves as an Accordia Professor in Residence, a capacity-building program where international physician scientists spend two to four uninterrupted weeks advising, training, and supervising African scholars and clinicians. He most recently spent 10 days in late November and early December 2013 working alongside his IDI colleagues in Kampala to evaluate new research ideas. “We recently published what I believe is the best of our papers, on the cost effectiveness of syphilis screening in the antenatal care setting,” said Dr. Kuznik.
So Andreas Kuznik, who slowly discovered what he wanted to be when he grew up, now knows that he can use and teach his special set of skills to identify where investments should be made in improving healthcare around the world.
Learn More:
- Mohammed Lamorde
- Reducing HIV Transmission from Mothers to Babies
- Evaluating the Cost-effectiveness and Budget Impact of Antenatal Syphilis Screening
- Pfizer Global Health Fellows Program
Read about other Pfizer Global Health Fellows:
Read the Pfizer-Accordia Global Health Foundation Case Study
