The Bergen Centre for Ethics and Priority Setting in Health (BCEPS) is a Research Council of Norway Centre of Excellence that aims to understand and promote ethically acceptable, fair, and efficient priority setting in national health systems.
Watch the introductory video by BCEPS co-founder and former director Ole Frithjof Norheim below to learn more about the research and projects BCEPS members work on.
Within the University of Bergen, BCEPS is part of the Section for Ethics and Health Economics at the Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care. We are located on the fourth floor of Overlege Danielssens Hus, Årstadveien 21, 5009 Bergen, Norway.
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BCEPS/IGS
BCEPS' Primary Objective
The overall objective of the Bergen Centre for Ethics and Priority Setting in Health is to understand and promote ethically acceptable, fair, and efficient priority setting in national health systems. BCEPS researchers currently carry out work in Norway, Ethiopia, Malawi, Zanzibar, India, Tanzania, Ghana, Nepal, and the US.
BCEPS' Leadership
BCEPS Director Ingvild Fossgard Sandøy is a physician and professor in Global Public Health at the Centre for International Health at the University of Bergen. She also serves as Deputy Director of the Centre for Intervention Science in Maternal and Child Health (CISMAC) at UiB and Co-Director of Development Learning Lab (UiB). Her areas of expertise are global public health, sexual and reproductive health (with a focus on low-and-middle-income countries) and social epidemiology and prevention.
BCEPS Deputy Director Kjell Arne Johansson is a professor of medical ethics and the philosophy of science at BCEPS. He also has a clinical background as a physician in the field of drug addiction and obstetrics and gynaecology. He leads the development of the FairChoices Disease Control Priorities Analytic Tool and is project leader for a 5-year project on "Equity and financial household impact in randomised controlled trials, implementation research and cohort studies in India" (EQUIFINANCE), started in 2021.
BCEPS' Main Research Workstreams
The work being conducted at BCEPS cuts across the disciplines of ethics, health economics and priority setting in health and can be divided into four main research workstreams, led by four Principal Investigators: BCEPS co-founder and former Director Professor Ole Frithjof Norheim, BCEPS Director Professor Ingvild Fossgard Sandøy, BCEPS Deputy Director Professor Kjell Arne Johansson, and Professor Ingrid Miljeteig.
Ole Frithjof Norheim leads the Rationing Lab, Ingvild Sandøy leads research teams in global public health, Kjell Arne Johannson leads the FairChoices research team, and Ingrid Miljeteig leads the Medical Ethics research team.
BCEPS’ research activities are relevant in both a national and international context, with BCEPS researchers often being called upon to provide input to debates on priority setting in health in Norway and internationally. When the Centre was established in 2019, funding was allocated to planned project activities in Ethiopia, Zanzibar, and Malawi.
Since then, it has attracted additional funding from RCN and Norad for activities that are now ongoing in India, Nepal, Tanzania, and Ghana.
In September 2023, BCEPS earned the prestigious status of an RCN Centre for Excellence in recognition of the quality, scope, and importance of the research being done at the Centre, which also provides funding from RCN for the next ten years.
Centre for International Health (CIH) at the University of Bergen
Centre for Experimental Research on Fairness, Inequality and Rationality (FAIR) at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH)
Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH)
Centre for Cancer Biomarkers (CCBIO) at the University of Bergen
Centre for Intervention Science in Maternal and Child Health (CISMAC)
Haukeland University Hospital, Helse Bergen Health Trust
Akershus University Hospital, Oslo
Partners in Ethiopia
The Addis Centre for Ethics and Priority Setting (ACEPS) is our key partner and acts as a regional hub for knowledge exchange in East Africa. It organises short and advanced courses in economic evaluation, priority setting and essential health service package design for relevant stakeholders in the region.
Africa CDC, Health Economics Program
Ministry of Health Ethiopia
Partners in Ghana
Official Country Team Partners
University of Ghana
Ministry of Health Ghana
Ghana Health Service
Collaborators
WHO (Health Financing Unit & NCD Unit)
PharmAccess
Ghana National Health Insurance Authority
NCD Alliance
Partners in India
Centre for Health Research and Development, Society for Applied Studies (CHRD-SAS)
Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI)
Partners in Malawi
Ministry of Health Malawi
Kamuzu College of Health Sciences (Health Economics and Policy Unit)
Partners in Nepal
Official Country Team Partners
Ministry of Health and Population
Epidemiology and Disease Control Division under Dept of Health Services
Kathmandu University
Tribhuvan University, Central Department of Economics
Kathmandu Institute of Child Health
Collaborators
WHO (Health Financing Unit & NCD Unit)
NCD Alliance
Partners in Tanzania
Official Country Team Partners
Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS)
Ministry of Health Tanzania
PharmAccess
President Office Regional and Local Government Authority (PORALG)
Collaborators
WHO (Health Financing Unit & NCD Unit)
Tanzania Non-communicable Diseases Alliance (TANCDA)
National Institute of Medical Research (NCDI Alliance)
National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF)
Partners in Zanzibar
Official Country Team Partners
Ministry of Health Zanzibar
Ministry of Finance
D-Tree
WHO
Addis Centre for Ethics and Priority Setting (ACEPS)
National Bureau of Statistics
Collaborators
PharmAccess
Health Improvement Project Zanzibar (HIPZ)
Other International Partners
University of Pennsylvania (US)
Harvard University (US)
University of Washington (US)
University of California, San Francisco (US)
University of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia)
University of York (UK)
London School of Economics (UK)
Makerere University (Uganda)
World Health Organisation
World Bank
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BCEPS funding organisations
Background
BCEPS has more than 30 cross-disciplinary researchers and conducts a wide range of projects in Norway and abroad.
Core disciplines are ethics, health economics and priority setting in health.