Health Inc. Seminar Series Healthcare, overconsumption, and the problem of uneconomic growth
Too much yet never enough? Overconsumption and uneconomic growth in health and healthcare
Featuring Professor Martin Hensher
Wednesday September 24, 2025 | 12 PM – 1 PM | Online via Zoom
Modern healthcare is deeply associated with economic growth. For some decades, evidence has been mounting that the negative consequences of economic growth may eventually counteract its benefits. Consumption is a key driver of economic growth, however, overconsumption in many sectors of the economy directly and indirectly harms health. Healthcare systems, especially in high-income countries, are also characterized by overconsumption resulting in harm to patients, communities and the natural environment. In this talk, Professor Martin Hensher will present perspectives from health and ecological economics that address the mechanisms of these problems and consider how they might be tackled.
Recommended Readings:
Hensher, Martin et al. (2024). Health economics in a world of uneconomic growth. Applied Health Economics and Health Policy, 22(4), 427-433.
Hensher, Martin et al. (2024). Diminishing marginal returns and sufficiency in health-care resource use: an exploratory analysis of outcomes, expenditure, and emissions. The Lancet Planetary Health 8(10), e744-e753.
Hensher, M. (2023). Climate change, health and sustainable healthcare: The role of health economics. Health Economics, 32(5), 985–992.
Hensher, Martin, et al. (2020). Health care, overconsumption and uneconomic growth: A conceptual framework. Social Science & Medicine, 266, 113420.
About the Speaker
Professor Martin Hensher is the Henry Baldwin Professorial Research Fellow in Health Systems Sustainability at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research at the University of Tasmania. His program of work explores how healthcare systems can meet the environmental, economic and social challenges of the years ahead. Martin draws on health and ecological economics to explore big systemic challenges: how health care can respond to climate change and ecological crisis, how it might function in a slower-growth future, and why investing more resources might increasingly not lead to better outcomes. Professor Hensher has over thirty years’ experience in health economics, planning and financing, gained in the UK, Australia, Africa, Europe and Central Asia. Professor Hensher served as the European Union Consultant in Health Economics in the South African National Department of Health; senior economic adviser in the Department of Health England; and a senior executive in the Tasmanian Department of Health.