Rate My Professor Trudy Sullivan

Professor Trudy Sullivan serves as a Professor in health economics within the Department of Public Health (Dunedin), part of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Otago. She earned her Bachelor of Commerce with Honours (BCom Hons) and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) from the University of Otago. Her PhD, awarded in 2012, centered on "Using MCDA (Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis) to prioritise government-funded health programmes," establishing a framework for health resource allocation. Additionally, Sullivan holds a consultancy position as a health economist in the Dunedin School of Medicine, where she collaborates with clinicians and researchers to incorporate health economics into their studies and projects.

Sullivan's research specializations include health economics, focusing on measuring and valuing health-related quality of life (HRQoL), multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) for priority setting in publicly funded services, cost-effectiveness analysis, and applied health economics. She has developed MCDA frameworks for prioritising publicly funded health care and is applying them to other public services. Her teaching includes PUBH 735: Economics of Health Policy Decision Making and PUBH 736: Economic Evaluation. Key publications encompass "A new tool for creating personal and social EQ-5D-5L value sets, including valuing 'dead'" (2020), "The hidden costs of employee drinking: A quantitative analysis" (2019), "Procrastination and the non-monotonic effect of deadlines on task completion" (2022), "Creating a priority list of non-communicable diseases to support health research funding decision-making" (2021), "Describing the health-related quality of life of Māori adults in Aotearoa me Te Waipounamu (New Zealand)" (2023), and "Creating an SF-6Dv2 social value set for New Zealand" (2024). She serves as a media expert on health economics and priority setting.