Glocalizing QALYs

Glocalizing QALYs is an ethnographic research project that examines the ethical, cultural, and political assumptions embedded in the metric of Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALY), a central tool used worldwide in healthcare resource-allocation decision-making. Although QALY is presented as a standardized and universal instrument, its calculation rests on contested notions of what counts as “good health,” whose meanings vary across cultural, historical, and political contexts. The project analyzes how health economists grapple with these assumptions in their everyday work.

Outputs to date include an article published in Social Science & Medicine – Qualitative Research in Health and a chapter in an edited volume forthcoming with Rutgers University Press, currently at an advanced stage toward final acceptance.

The research has been supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF, grant 95/22) and by institutional affiliations, including the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and the Martin Buber Society of Fellows.