ISPOR announced the 2022 HEOR Awards in September. We are honored to announce that ICER’s Director of Health Economics Dr. Melanie Whittington received the Bernie O’Brien New Investigator Award, which recognizes those who have shown evidence of exceptional promise based on their emerging body of technical and scholarly work in the field of health economics.

Dr. Whittington joined ICER in September of 2020 as Associate Director of Health Economics, and was promoted to Director of Health Economics in January 2022.

Melanie Whittington, PhD, MS. Associate Director of Health Economics

“The Bernie O’Brien New Investigator Award recognizes those who have shown evidence of exceptional promise based on their emerging body of technical and scholarly work in the field of health economics.”

In her role, she leads the cost-effectiveness analyses and potential budget impact analyses within ICER reviews, directs the content within the Interactive Modeler™, and advances the field of health economics by developing innovative methods with applications for value assessment. Notably, she led the economic evaluations within the Alzheimer’s Disease and COVID-19 ICER reviews. She is an author of more than 50 peer-reviewed manuscripts in the field of health economics as well as an author on more than ten ICER assessments. Her research has been published in high impact journals, including Value in Health, Pharmacoeconomics, Journal of Clinical Oncology, JAMA Pediatrics, JAMA Oncology, JAMA Network Open, Neurology, Health Affairs, and the Journal of Managed Care and Specialty Pharmacy.

Prior to coming to ICER in 2020, Mel was an academic collaborator of ICER’s and a member of the ICER Health Economics Council since 2015. While in academia, she contributed toward numerous ICER reviews and activities, including leading the economic modeling in the CAR-T and digital applications for opioid use disorder reviews. She held an academic appointment in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus with a joint appointment with the Veteran’s Health Administration as an investigator within the VA’s Center for Veteran-Centered and Value-Driven Care. She is an active member in the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) and the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM).

Dr. Whittington received her PhD in Health Services Research from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus with a concentration in health economics. She also holds a Master of Science degree in Health Sciences with a concentration in public health.