At the end of 2025, we established the Health Technology Assessment Advisory Group (HAG), a panel of leading researchers and professionals with extensive expertise in mental health, economic evaluation, and health technology assessment. The acronym may sound unconventional, but we wear it proudly and our HAG members bring exactly the kind of wisdom and insight the project needs.
There is a clear need for a robust tool to capture the economic impact of mental health. Currently, gaps remain in how resource use and associated costs are systematically measured in this field. With the support and guidance of our expert group, we aim to address this gap. With guidance from our experts, we have developed the context-specific Resource Use Measurement Survey (RUM) to measure the economic impact associated with mental health before and after the interventions in our study (YEAH, SELFIE, MOST).
We have held two meetings to discuss the project, economic evaluation framework and have feedback on our resource-use measures to make sure that all relevant costs are included.
The RUM survey is now being used across our study partner sites, where it is being completed by our youth advisors as part of the project. This marks an important milestone, as it allows us to begin collecting real-world data that will inform the economic evaluation and help us better understand the broader costs and benefits of mental health interventions.
We are grateful for the expertise and insights of our HAG members:
Ben Wijnen (Trimbos Instituut)
Carlos Garcia Alonso (Universidad Loyola Andalucía)
Brendan Kenelly (University of Galway)
Talitha Feenstra (University of Groningen)
Frederico Tedeschi (Università di Verona)
Hareth Al-Janabi (University of Birmingham)
Ann John (Swansea University)
Nkem Ugbogulu (Swansea University)
Cathy Mihalopoulos (Monash University)
Adrianne Alayli (University Hospital Düsseldorf)
Their collective expertise in health economics and mental health research is invaluable in strengthening the methodological rigor and relevance of our work.
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