The field/subfield of health economics has grown dramatically in recent years. There is now a vibrant community of health economists, largely focused on domestic U.S. policy topics, joining faculty and graduate students across schools of medicine, public health, and public policy (as well as departments of economics) in the U.S. and Europe. There are rigorous, well-established health economics conferences; top journals in medicine and economics regularly publish (and appropriately referee) papers in health economics; faculty with publication strategies mixing economics and medical/public health journals are rewarded and promoted for rigorous work at the intersection of health policy and economics; and importantly, graduate students recognize a viable academic career path in health economics outside of departments of economics.
At the same time, there has not been commensurate progress in the field of health economics focused on low- and middle-income countries ("global health economics"). The field of development economics has increasingly focused on health, but it lacks specialization described above paralleling the field of health economics born from public and labor economics.
The term "health economics" in global health policy currently has a more ambiguous meaning and includes work in decision science (cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis) and other studies involving some financial dimension but that diverge from mainstream economics. Global health economics conferences reflect this more ambiguous meaning; leading medical journals lack editorial and refereeing expertise to appropriately evaluate global health economics research; global health economics faculty in schools of medicine and public health feel relatively more pressure to pursue traditional biomedical publication strategies (emphasizing a large number of publications, regardless of outlet) rather than targeting impactful economics journals; and graduate students interested in global health economics often feel uncertain about the viability of an academic career path.