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Modelling the impacts of an ageing population, preventative healthcare and future life expectancy
After a successful planning meeting in February, this workshop moved the Challenge forward by identifying the insights that modelling can offer national and local policy on ageing. The aim of the workshop was to discuss the extent to which current policy questions are answerable given what we already know, and how they could be answered with further research.
The first workshop, chaired by Professor Jonathan Mant, focused on the question of how to model the impacts of an ageing population, preventative healthcare, and future life expectancy. The workshop began with presentations given by academic experts, clinical practitioners, and local and national government officials, on topics ranging from mid life interventions which improve health in older age to the lessons that can be learnt from modelling disease transmission in respect of elderly health. A lively and productive exchange followed these presentations, and was centred on four key questions set by policy makers:
- Should there be a common set of assumptions for modelling?
- How far ahead is it feasible to model?
- How feasible are local models for local policy given the current emphasis on national models for national policy?
- When modelling healthcare costs, should we model demography or service use?
Presentations can be viewed by clicking on the titles below:
Petra Klepac: Ageing and modelling of infectious diseases
Kay-Tee Khaw: Modelling policy impacts and opportunities of an ageing population
Louise Lafortune: Midlife approaches to prevent dementia, frailty and disability in later life
For a summary of the discussion, please click here.
(Cover image courtesy of marina guimarães via Wikicommons, banner image from Jaka Ostrovrsnik on Flickr