Beate Sander

Dr. Beate Sander, RN, MBA, MEcDec, PhD, is a Canadian infectious disease economist based in Toronto, Ontario, with expertise in health economics and simulation modeling. She is notable in the COVID-19 pandemic due to her role on the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table.

She contributes substantively to federal/provincial policy decision-making, serving as an expert to national and international advisory bodies.

Sander has studied at several institutions internationally:¹⁾

• PhD (University of Toronto)
• MEcDev (Australian National University, Australia)
• MBA (Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany)
• RN (Medizinische Fachschule Chemnitz, Germany)

Beate is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.²⁾

Sander is the Director of Population Health Economics Research (PHER) at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute under University Health Network.³⁾

Sander is a member of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI), where she also chairs the Economics Task Group and co-chairs the Economic Guidelines Task Group.

Sander is an active member of the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM), where she was elected as President.⁴⁾ She had served as Vice President in 2017-2018.⁵⁾ She participated in a December 26, 2020 webinar in which she delivered a talk titled “Ensemble Modelling to Inform COVID-19 Policy Response”.^{6) 7)}

She is also on the editorial board of the Medical Decision Making journal.⁸⁾

Sander is a scientist in Communicable Diseases, Emergency Preparedness and Response at Public Health Ontario.⁹⁾

Sander is a Faculty Associate at the Canadian Centre for Health Economics (CCHE).¹⁰⁾

Sander is a Scientist and the Director of Population Health Economics Research at Toronto Health Economics and Technology Assessment Collaborative (THETA), associated with the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute.¹¹⁾

Sander is a Scientific Co-Chair of the Canadian Lyme Disease Research Network, a project lead by Kieran Moore, Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) for Public Health Ontario.¹²⁾ The project is funded through the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), and Sander is a co-applicant on the grant.^{13) 14)} She reported no conflicts of interest in a July 9, 2019 disclosure.¹⁵⁾

Sander is an Adjunct Faculty member in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at York University, and a member of the LAboratory of Mathematical Parallel Systems laboratory.^{16) 17)}

In 2012, Sander joined as an Adjunct Scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES).¹⁸⁾

On April 1, 2019, Sander became the Canada Research Chair in Economics of Infectious Diseases, affiliated with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the University of Toronto.¹⁹⁾ She is principal investigator of several multidisciplinary projects funded by CIHR and other funders, including an evaluation of Zika virus and COVID-19 interventions using computer simulation.

The CIHR has awarded Sander the following grants:

• 2014-2018: $475,367.00 as co-primary investigator for “Reducing the burden of hospital-associated Clostridium Difficile infections in Canada through optimal prevention policies: A multidisciplinary individual-based modeling approach”²⁰⁾
• 2014-2017: $450,000.00 as PI for “The cost-effectiveness of West Nile virus intervention strategies. A computer simulation model.”
• 2014-2015: $99,000.00 as PI for “Assessing the health and economic burden of Lyme disease using laboratory and health administrative data.” One collaborator is Samir Patel, a co-OST member and Chief of Microbiology at Public Health Ontario.
• 2014: $15,000.00 as co-PI for “The Cost-Effectiveness of Integrated Cervical Cancer Prevention Strategies in Ontario.”
• 2013-2016: $474,627.00 as PI for “Estimating longitudinal healthcare cost for infectious diseases using administrative data.”
• 2013-2015: $45,000.00 as PI for “Assessing the health and economic burden of mycobacterial infections using laboratory and health administrative data.”

Sander is a member of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table.²¹⁾

Sander's research is focused on “developing economic strategies to evaluate interventions to combat infectious and vector-borne diseases.” She and her team “are addressing challenges in the use of costing data in economic evaluations, the need for disease-specific and comprehensive simulation models, and the broader societal impact of infectious diseases and their interventions.”²²⁾

Additional areas of interest include “Economic evaluation of health care interventions with a focus on public health, decision analysis, health economics, mathematical modeling, use of laboratory, surveillance, and administrative data for economic evaluation, public health, vaccine-preventable diseases”.²³⁾

• Sander led a 2010 study titled “The Cost-Effectiveness of Ontario’s Universal Influenza Immunization Program”, which she credits as “the first study to provide evidence that a universal program is economically attractive in jurisdictions with influenza epidemiology and health care costs broadly similar to Ontario.”²⁴⁾ The study contributed to the implementation of public health policies around universal flu vaccination in Canada and the United States. Her co-authors include fellow OST member Allison McGeer.
  • Funded by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES), Public Health Agency of Canada, and the University of Toronto.
• She also co-authored “Is a mass immunization program for pandemic (H1N1) 2009 good value for money? Evidence from the Canadian Experience” alongside Allison McGeer and David Fisman, current and former OST comrades. The study concluded that “Ontario’s pandemic H1N1 immunization program was cost-effective as implemented”.²⁵⁾
  • Funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
• The benefits of pneumococcal vaccination for seniors: a Centre for Vaccine Preventable Diseases interdisciplinary project on healthy aging and immunization science²⁶⁾
  • Funded through ICES by the Connaught Fund for a total of $248,789.00.
• The epidemiology and economic burden of hepatitis C viral infection in the First Nations population in Ontario
  • Funded through ICES by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for a total of $650,250.00.
• The prevention of group B streptococcal (GBS) disease in infants
  • Funded through ICES by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for a total of $409,276.00.

Beate received funding from the Ontario COVID-19 Rapid Research Fund as principal investigator for an “Ontario Together” study titled “Ontario’s Response to COVID-19: Balancing Trade-offs and Improving Outcomes for all Ontarians”.²⁷⁾

The CIHR provided her a grant as Co-Investigator for “Scalable, Customizable, Digital Health Communication Materials to Help Canada Address the COVID-19 Pandemic” at Witteman Lab.²⁸⁾

Beate received a grant from the Canadian Cardiovascular Society's COVID-19 Challenge for Canada Initiative for a study titled “Co-Investigator Consequences of delays in cardiac procedures and surgeries due to the COVID-19 pandemic”. Additional funding came from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and ICES.²⁹⁾

• Thomas and Edna Naylor Memorial Award, 2012³⁰⁾
  • $1,000 award presented for best paper “Thesis in Health Services and Health Care Research”
• Lee B. Lusted Student Prize, 2010 for outstanding presentation of research.
  • $500.00 awarded to Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) at the 31th Annual Meeting, Toronto, ON, Canada

Sander received unrestricted funding to serve as a consultant to Roche for work on Tamiflu, as well as travel grants and honoraria for speaking at meetings on pandemic influenza mitigation strategies.³¹⁾

She also received a $2,500.00 award from Sanofi for Communicable Disease Epidemiology.³²⁾

Sander was interviewed in December 2021 for the Toronto Star on the subject of the Omicron variant.³³⁾

Sander can be reached by phone at 647-260-7425.