Background: Alzheimer's disease and other dementias (ADODs) severely threaten the wellbeing of older people, their families, and communities, especially with projected exponential growth. Understanding the macroeconomic implications of ADODs for policy making is essential but under-researched.
Methods: We used a health-augmented macroeconomic model to calculate the macroeconomic burden of ADODs for 152 countries or territories, accounting for: the effect on labour supply of reduced working hours of informal caregivers; the effect on labour supply of ADODs-related mortality and morbidity; age-sex-specific differences in education, work experience, labour market participations, and informal caregivers; and treatment and formal care costs diverting from savings and investments.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
June 2024
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments directly funded vaccine research and development (R&D), quickly leading to multiple effective vaccines and resulting in enormous health and economic benefits to society. We develop a simple economic model showing this feat could potentially be repeated for other health challenges. Based on inputs from the economic and medical literatures, the model yields estimates of optimal R&D spending on treatments and vaccines for known diseases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMedical and long-term care for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRDs) can impose a large economic burden on individuals and societies. We estimated the per capita cost of ADRDs care in the in the United States in 2016 and projected future aggregate care costs during 2020-2060. Based on a previously published methodology, we used U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEur J Health Econ
September 2024
Objectives: Invasive meningococcal disease, an uncommon but severe disease, imposes catastrophic health and economic burdens. Cost-utility analysis (CUA) assumes separability in lifetime health and economic variables and cannot capture the full value of preventing such burdens. We overcome these limitations with a retrospective societal perspective cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of meningococcal serogroup B vaccination (4CMenB) of one infant cohort in the United Kingdom using a health-augmented lifecycle model (HALM) incorporating health's interactions with consumption, earnings, non-market time and financial risk.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGroup A Streptococcus (Strep A) leads to 600,000 deaths and 600 million cases of pharyngitis annually. Although long a promising target for vaccine development, how much funding should be allocated to develop a Strep A vaccine is unclear. We aim to calculate the optimal amount of global spending for Strep A vaccine development, the resulting benefits, and the social rate of return on this spending.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The burden of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRDs) is expected to grow rapidly with population aging, especially in low- and middle-income countries, in the next few decades. We used a willingness-to-pay approach to project the global, regional, and national economic burden of ADRDs from 2019 to 2050 under status quo.
Methods: We projected age group and country-specific disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost to ADRDs in future years based on historical growth in disease burden and available population projections.
New technologies and unprecedented public investment have transformed vaccine development and allowed fast delivery of safe and efficacious COVID-19 vaccines, mitigating the impact of the pandemic on health and the economy. A quantum change in public investment for vaccine development and widespread vaccine distribution are necessary to achieve global pandemic preparedness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine development and manufacturing have proceeded at a historically unprecedented pace. This speed may be accounted for by the unprecedented scale of resources being devoted to addressing COVID-19; an unusual intensity of cooperation, encompassing the public and private sectors and occurring both within and across national borders; and innovation with respect to both technologies (for example, new vaccine platforms) and processes (for example, vaccine clinical trials). In this article we describe and analyze how resources, cooperation, and innovation have contributed to the accelerated development of COVID-19 vaccines.
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