Forecasting the future burden of disability through changing patterns of disease: the SIMPOP model 
(Compass)
16 May 2012
12-1pm
Venue: Room 107, Pacific Fale Building (Building 273)
Host: Professor Carol Jagger, AXA Professor of Epidemiology of Ageing in the Institute for Ageing and Health, Newcastle University
Major causes of disability in later life are known to be the consequences of both acute and chronic diseases such as stroke, coronary heart disease (CHD), arthritis, and dementia. Projections of the numbers of disabled older people and their need for long-term care have rarely taken into account the considerable temporal changes in these diseases that have occurred and will occur in the future due to higher levels of obesity and inactivity.
As part of a wider project modelling ageing populations to 2030 (MAP2030) a dynamic macro-simulation model (SIMPOP) has being developed to estimate future numbers of older people with disability and years lived with disability over the next 20 years under a number of disease scenarios. Data from the MRC Cognitive Function and Ageing Study, a nationally representative sample of people aged 65 years and over was used to estimate transition rates to disability and death conditional on a range of diseases and conditions present at baseline. These transition rates were used with the 1992 England and Wales population to simulate the new numbers with and without disability to 2030. A series of scenarios for trends in incidence, risk factors and treatment for stroke, coronary heart disease (CHD), arthritis, and dementia were devised from systematic reviews and these were applied to the simulation model. More general scenarios of improved and poorer population health were also applied.
The seminar will introduce the MAP2030 project as a whole and the design of SIMPOP. Comparisons of the size of the disabled older population under the different health scenarios will be shown as well as disability-free life expectancy (DFLE) which alongside life expectancy provides opportunities to assess how large interventions need to be to produce compressions of disability.
Carol Jagger is the AXA Professor of Epidemiology of Ageing in the Institute for Ageing and Health, Newcastle University (http://www.ncl.ac.uk/iah/). Her research spans demography and epidemiology with a focus on mental and physical functioning in ageing and her current research program has three themes: Understanding variations in Healthy Active Life Expectancy; Disability and Functioning in Later Life; and Ageing Population Projections for Policy. She has been involved in the design or used the data of most of the major UK cohort studies of ageing, in particular the Melton Mowbray studies and more recently the MRC Cognitive Function and Ageing Study (http://www.cfas.ac.uk/) and the MRC Newcastle 85+ study (http://www.ncl.ac.uk/iah/research/programmes/85plus.htm).
Within Europe she sits on the Steering Group of the European Health Survey System and the Task Force on Disability Surveys and has recently been appointed to the Scientific Advisory Panel of the Joint Programming Initiative ‘More Years, Better Lives’. Nationally she has advised the Office of National Statistics and the Scottish Public Health Observatory on Healthy Life Expectancy and has provided evidence on this to the government Works and Pensions Committee, the Health Committee and the Scottish Finance Committee. She is an active member of the Actuarial Profession Mortality Research Committee and the Alzheimer’s Society Public Health Steering Group. Recent grants include: the FUTURAGE project (see http://futurage.group.shef.ac.uk/) which created the roadmap for ageing research in Europe for the next 10-15 years with Carol leading the Healthy Ageing and Wellbeing theme; and Inequalities in Healthy Active Life Expectancy: The role of time, place, person and methods (InHALE) for which she is principal investigator. Carol is a Chartered Scientist and a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health.
