Rising healthcare costs due to new interventions and technologies and an ageing population with stagnating or declining healthcare budgets pose major challenges for healthcare systems across the globe. The identification and implementation of cost-effective technologies, interventions and policies is therefore of high priority for the financial sustainability of social insurance and healthcare systems. 

Using a wide range of methods (including claims data analysis, microsimulation, Mendelian randomization, etc.), we evaluate and analyze the costs of non-communicable diseases and their risk factors and the cost-effectiveness of interventions and policies for the prevention and care of these diseases. Examples for this stream of research include cost-of-illness studies on obesity, type 2 diabetes, and diabetes complications as well as economic evaluations of intensified diabetes management in the UK, of life-style-based diabetes prevention in the US, or of taxation of sugar-sweetened beverages in Germany.