Department of Health and Human Services Releases ERG-Authored Study

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation recently published findings from an ERG-supported research project on antibacterial resistance. We supported all aspects of this work, which examined the economic incentives and societal willingness-to-pay for developing rapid point-of-care diagnostic devices to detect C. difficile, CRE, and N. gonorrhoeae—three antibiotic-resistant bacteria that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider to be “urgent threats.” As part of this work, ERG also published a peer-reviewed article in the American Journal of Infection Control that estimates the number of incident cases and associated health outcomes for C. difficile and CRE infections, as well as societal willingness-to-pay to avoid them.