The Problem
About Extending the Cure
The Extending the Cure project is a research and consultative effort that frames the growing problem of antibiotic resistance as a challenge in managing a shared societal resource. The inaugural report of Extending the Cure provides an objective evaluation of a number of policies to encourage patients, health care providers, and managed care organizations to make better use of existing antibiotics and to give pharmaceutical firms greater incentives to both develop new antibiotics and care about resistance to existing drugs. The report has been widely debated at a series of consultations with representatives from the medical, insurance, pharmaceutical, government, and academic communities. It sets the stage for future action and continued research to prevent the impending health crisis of widespread antibiotic resistance.
The Extending the Cure project is housed at Resources for the Future, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization that conducts independent research—rooted primarily in economics and other social sciences—on environmental, energy, natural resources, and public health issues.
The Extending the Cure project is funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through its Pioneer Portfolio, which supports innovative projects that may lead to breakthrough improvements in health and health care.
Extending the Cure is advised by a distinguished panel of academics:
Kenneth Arrow, Chair
Professor of Economics Emeritus, Stanford University
Donald Kennedy
Bing Professor of Environmental Science and Policy Emeritus, Stanford University and Editor-in-Chief, Science
Simon Levin
Moffett Professor of Biology, Princeton University
Saul Levmore
Dean and William B. Graham Professor of Law, University of Chicago
Neil Fishman
Director of Antimicrobial Management, University of Pennsylvania Health System
Author Bios
Ramanan Laxminarayan is a senior fellow at Resources for the Future in Washington, D.C. His research deals with the integration of epidemiological models of infectious disease transmission and acquisition of bacterial and parasite resistance into the economic analysis of public health problems. He has worked with the World Health Organization on evaluating malaria treatment policy in Africa, has organized two conferences on the economics of resistance, and recently served on a National Academy of Science/Institute of Medicine Committee on the Economics of Antimalarial Drugs. He teaches international health policy, and development economics at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Laxminarayan received his undergraduate degree in engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India, and both his master’s degree in public health and his doctorate in economics are from the University of Washington, Seattle.
Anup Malani is a Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. He is also a Research Affiliate for the Joint Center for Poverty Research at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Mr. Malani teaches, among other classes, Health Law, Corporations, and Bankruptcy. His research examines the control of infectious disease, placebo effects, antibiotic resistance, medical malpractice liability, and the conduct of and inferences from medical trials. Mr. Malani graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 2000. He clerked for the Hon. Stephen F. Williams, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2000-2001 and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in 2001-2002. Mr. Malani received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago's Department of Economics in 2003. Between 2002 and 2006, Mr. Malani was an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia Law School and the Health Evaluation Sciences Department of the University of Virginia Medical School.
David Howard is an assistant professor in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. His research focuses on using economics and statistics to better understand physician decisionmaking and its implications for public policy. Currently Howard is studying trends in treated disease prevalence and the value of cancer screening in patients with limited life expectancy. He is also examining the impact of quality on patients’ choice of hospital for kidney transplantation. He has acted as an adviser or consultant to the American Cancer Society, the Division of Transplantation in the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Institute of Medicine. He received his doctorate from the economics track of the health policy program at Harvard University in 2000.
David L. Smith is a scientist at the Division of Epidemiology and Population Studies at the Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health. His research interests include mathematical epidemiology and economic epidemiology; academic subdisciplines that use mathematical models to understand the epidemiology, ecology, population dynamics, and control of infectious diseases; and the interplay between the biology of infectious diseases, economics, and human behavior. He has published on the economic impact of agricultural antibiotic use, the spatial spread and economic epidemiology of hospital-acquired pathogens, the epidemiology of malaria, and the spatial spread of raccoon rabies. He earned doctoral and master’s degrees from Princeton University in ecology and evolutionary biology, and master’s and undergraduate degrees from Brigham Young University in mathematics. Smith conducted this research as a part of his official duties at the Fogarty International Center, NIH.
