DESCRIPTION: The School of Health Management and Policy (SHMP) within the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University seeks funding to continue and improve the highly successful Annual Health Economics Conference.  Following 16 years of partnership between the host university and the Department of Veterans Affairs Management Science Group, last year the Agency for Health Care Quality and Research (AHRQ) for the first time partnered with a host university to sponsor this conference.  This partnership succeeded by all accounts, including the high quality of the presented papers and the discussion as well as the in-depth discussions advancing the agenda for health economics research.  The aims of this conference are: (1) to advance the policy applicability of health economics by exploring theoretical issues that can be directly applied to real-world health settings; (2) to improve the policy relevance of empirical health economics by fostering research that emphasizes study of important current questions using the most rigorous methods; and (3) to foster career development of young health economic scholars by intentionally placing promising junior economists with high-profile senior economists in an intensive two-day, small group setting.  This proposal requests funding for this year's conference to build on the previous success and ensure the continued exchange of these high-impact ideas.  This year the conference will build upon past success in several key areas. ( 1) It will retain the core, which is extensive discussion of and feedback on leading-edge, policy-relevant research in health economics. ( 2) ASU's Center for Health Information and Research (CHIR) will host a session describing their data and the potential for research with these data, with a focus on pay-for-performance and the role of information technology in improving quality, access and efficiency.  CHIR has been named one of six better quality information centers, jointly funded by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Studies (CMS) and AHRQ, and recently visited by both Michael Leavitt and Carolyn Clancy.  Ongoing CHIR projects focus on AHRQ's priority populations.  This session will promote further research regarding these priority populations. ( 3) A keynote speech will be given by Dr. Kerry Smith, a highly respected economist from outside of the health economics research community.  This keynote will challenge the participants to consider new research topics and approaches. ( 4) Members of the health care community will partner with the host.  These partners represent users of health services research, and the conference will provide them with the opportunity to learn about the leading-edge of research and shape the future research agenda.  Conference activities will also produce a research agenda driven by the papers, the discussions, the CHIR data session, and the keynote address.  This year's conference will be held March 16-17 on the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ. [ unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]