HCHE Young Researcher Award

Fabian Grünwald receives the HCHE Young Researcher Award 2025 for his excellent research work on the effect of the European authorisation procedure for medicinal products on the time to market. Jury member Prof. Dr. Dorte Gyrd-Hansen from the University of Southern Denmark underlines the thoroughness of the causal analysis and the political relevance of the results: ‘The study represents the first successful attempt to investigate how joining the EU and participating in the EU's centralised regulatory processes can improve patient access to medicines in new Member States. Grünwald and co-authors find that EU membership significantly shortens the delay to market launch by almost eleven months. Interestingly, this effect appears to be mainly due to faster acceptance of medicines that do not fall within the mandatory scope of the European Medicines Agency procedure.’

Paper: Harmonizing regulatory market approval of products with high safety requirements: Evidence from the European pharmaceutical market

Also receiving the HCHE Young Researcher Award 2025 was Benedicta Hermanns from the Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences at Universität Hamburg, who found in an experimental study that attitudes towards risk-taking and prosociality can predict the health-related behaviour of the population. ‘Preventive behaviour is crucial for containing the spread of infectious diseases, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown. Benedicta Hermanns‘ findings underline the importance of considering prosocial motives when studying health behaviour and developing effective public health policies,’ said jury member Prof. Dr Aleksandra Torbica from Bocconi University in Milan. Herrmanns is now a researcher at the Institute for Digital Economics at TU Hamburg.

Carolin Brinkmann from the University of Hamburg has focussed on the monetary evaluation criteria of quality of life and specifically on the evaluation of life years in relation to well-being. ‘Health economists have been using the quality-adjusted life year (QALY) to measure health outcomes for many years. As the scope of economic evaluations expands to include areas such as social care and mental health, it is particularly important to measure these additional benefits. Carolin Brinkmann's research aims to capture an individual's quality of life, often referred to as well-being,’ said jury member Prof. em. Dr Friedrich Breyer from the University of Konstanz.

Paper: From Health to Well-Being: Toward a Monetary Valuation of a Well-Being-Adjusted Life-Year

Jona Frasch from the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf investigated the increase in costs due to emergency hospital admissions caused by extreme temperatures. The research results show that extreme temperatures are detrimental to health and cause considerable costs in the healthcare system. ‘The effects of climate change are not only evident in changes and damage to the environment, they also have a very real impact on the health of the population and the healthcare system and cause high consequential costs,’ said jury member Prof Dr Mark Sculpher from the University of York.

Paper: Effects of extreme temperature on morbidity, mortality, and case severity in German emergency care