Is There Compression of Morbidity? Evidence and Consequences

Exploratory Workshop Date: Friday, September 28, 2012
Time: 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Location: Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, 9 Bow Street, Cambridge (directions)

Overview and goals of the workshop:
The workshop will gather leading investigators from different disciplines to provide evidence of whether recent increases in survival and life expectancy are accompanied by more years in good health and thus, leading to a compression of morbidity. The compression of morbidity should indicate a reduction in the innate morbidity occurring within people in a population rather than an improvement in environmental conditions external to the individuals living in the environment. For example, a decline in disability may reflect the provision of electric chairs but it would be the related reduction in the ability to walk that we would want to investigate to determine whether there has been compression of morbidity.

The objectives of the workshop include:

1. Bring together a small group of experts working on compression of morbidity to present the state of the evidence on the topic from various disciplinary perspectives including demography, economics, and epidemiology. In particular, we will explore: (a) different frameworks and measures for analyzing trends in life expectancy, disability and morbidity, (b) economic and public health implications of compression/expansion of morbidity, (c) theoretical and empirical questions that would be useful to address, and (d) what data are or are not available to answer these questions.

2. Elaborate a more accurate description to the compression of morbidity besides highlighting way forward for research and policy

Faculty Conveners:
Subu Subramanian, PhD, Professor of Population Health and Geography, HSPH and
Hiram Beltran-Sanchez, PhD, David E. Bell Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies

Agenda:

9:00-9:30AM Coffee

9:30-10:00 Welcome, Workshop objectives and Introductions

10:00-11:00 – “Trends in Disability and Related Conditions Among the 40 and Over Population”  presented by Linda G. Martin, Senior Fellow at the RAND Corporation

11:00-12:00 – “Changes Over Time in the Morbidity Process” presented by Eileen Crimmins, Edna M. Jones Professor, University of Southern California

12:00-1:00 Lunch

1:00-2:00PM – “Health Declines at Older Ages” presented by David Cutler, Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics, and Professor in the Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard University

2:00-3:00 – “Global Patterns and Changes in Healthy Life Expectancy” presented by Joshua Salomon, Professor of Global Health, Harvard School of Public Health

3:00-3:30 Break

3:30-4:30 “Two Americas at the Dawn of the Aging Revolution” presented by S. Jay Olshansky, Professor in the School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago

4:30-5:00 Open discussion led by David Canning, Richard Saltonstall Professor of Population Sciences and Professor of Economics and International Health, Harvard School of Public Healthh

5:00-5:15 Closing led by SV (Subu) Subramanian, Professor of Population Health and Geography, Harvard School of Public Health

Participants:
David Canning, Richard Saltonstall Professor of Population Sciences, Harvard School of Public Health
Eileen M. Crimmins, Edna M. Jones Professor & AARP Chair in Gerontology, School of Gerontology, USC
David Cutler, Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics, Harvard University
Linda G. Martin, Senior Fellow, RAND Corporation (Washington, D.C.)
S. Jay Olshansky, Professor of Epidemiology, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health
Joshua Salomon, Professor of Global Health, Department of Global Health and Population, HSPH

Note that PUBLICATIONS relevant to this workshop will be posted on this page.