Dagna O. Constenla

Dagna O. Constenla is an internationally recognized expert in the fields of international public health, health economics and policy, public health interventions, and pediatric vaccines. She currently acts as director of economics and finance at the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC), an organization dedicated to accelerated global access to life-saving vaccines, at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland.
Background and education
Constenla was born near Valparaíso, Chile. She completed her bachelor's degree and then received her master's degree in public health and health care administration at California State University. She continued her studies at the University of London, School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where she received a PhD in health economics and health policy.
Research
Her research on the measurement of the value of vaccines has been wide-ranging. She was one of the first in Latin America to develop a conceptual framework that allowed the differing incremental cost-effectiveness of vaccination between countries to be understood in context and to point the way towards a general approach that might be used by the public health community to plan future vaccination programs in the region. This project, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Pan American Health Organization, used an existing surveillance program (SIREVA) to develop a systematic approach to the evaluation of a pneumococcal conjugate vaccines in Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay.
Since completing her PhD, Constenla has acted as an expert consultant to various academic, non-profit and health care organizations including Emory University, the Sabin Vaccine Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). She has led various health economic programs to evaluate rotavirus, pneumococcal, meningococcal, HPV, malaria, and West Nile virus vaccination in several countries in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and North America. Constenla has contributed intellectually to a number of international scientific committees, including the Working Group for Economic Evaluation of Pneumococcal and Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccines, WHO Consultation on the broader economic impact on vaccines, and workshops on the economics of vaccination in low and middle-income countries. Her work has focused mainly on gaining a better understanding of the economics of pediatric vaccination in developing countries. Some of her methodological concerns center on the need to use standardized methods for economic analyses of vaccination programs, suitability of study endpoints, the generalizability and representativeness of data, and how variable data can best be applied to local situations. Her current interests center on developing innovative financial tools to value vaccination programs in countries that need it most.
Other areas of her research include budget impact analyses of malaria vaccines, supported by the Malaria Vaccine Initiative, cost of illness analyses of meningococcal and pneumococcal vaccines, supported by the Sabin Vaccine Institute. Constenla has also authored and co-authored a series of papers on economics of pneumococcal, rotavirus, malaria, HPV, and meningitis vaccines.

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