Background – Pilot Projects for Research on Subnational Burden of Disease
CHTF funds one- to two-year pilot projects to conduct novel social science research. The research will use Global Burden of Disease (GBD) results to examine the social, economic, and health impact disparities of health and population aging. Applications that leverage GBD data, bring an international focus to understanding health outcomes and health disparities, or examine trends at the subnational country level are particularly welcome. Funded projects are expected to generate presentations and publications that will form the basis of further applications to the National Institute on Aging, the National Institutes of Health, or other funding bodies. Pilot projects are designed to support a new generation of lead academic investigators situated at the intersection of health metrics, economics, and social sciences. Individual awards usually range from $15,000 to $75,000 each. Indirect costs are not allowed. For pilot project guidelines and eligibility information click here.
The 2017–2018 Call for Proposals is now closed.
2017–2018 Pilot Awards
Demand for preventive care services and health disparity among Mexico’s vulnerable populations in the era of universal health care
Project PI: Melissa Knox
Project Summary: The project will use data from the Global Burden of Disease project, Mexican health survey data, and machine learning techniques to identify the determinants of demand for the most salient forms of preventive care in Mexico. This research will contribute to a broader set of studies asking whether preventive care services are underutilized in Mexico.
Investigation of novel analytic approaches to identifying distinctive patterns of cause-specific mortality and underlying risk factors using county-level data in the United States
Project PI: Andrew Stokes
Project Summary: The overarching objective of this pilot study is to identify distinctive clusters of US counties that share similar patterns across multiple causes of death and examine associations between mortality clusters and underlying risk factors at the county level by leveraging county level risk factor data.
2016–2017 Pilot Awards
Estimating costs, decomposing changes, and forecasting future spending on Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias in the U.S.
Project PI: Joseph Dieleman
Project Summary: This study will develop a reliable source of information on health spending for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), including disentangling spending on AD from spending on comorbidities, generating health expenditure estimates for AD, decomposing the increases in health spending on AD across its major drivers, and will project future US health spending on AD through 2040.
Health expenditures for the elderly in the United States: A feasibility study for estimating county-level total Medicare expenditures by diagnosis.
Project PI: Marcia Weaver
Project Summary: The purpose of the pilot research will be to obtain county-level estimates of Medicare expenditures for the elderly by diagnosis in the United States (US). The long-term goal is to use the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data to analyze the relationship between health expenditures and disability adjusted life years (DALY) saved among the elderly in the US.
Subnational Burden of Cirrhosis in Mexico. Trends, Risk Factors and Implications for an aging population.
Project PI: Hector Lamadrid-Figueroa
Project Summary: This research will estimate the burden of liver cirrhosis in Mexico through the use of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data and by proposing the addition of new sub-national level covariates: specific beverage alcohol consumption (type of alcoholic beverage) and socioeconomic status and genetic ancestry for the 32 states of Mexico.
Exploratory study on solutions to improve health of left-behind elderly with severe mental disorders in rural China.
Project PI: Roman Dong Xu
Project Summary: This proposal will examine the health and care of elderly with severe mental disorders who have been left-behind as their families move to urban settings and will develop and pilot a low‐cost community‐based solution to improve the health of the left‐behind village elderly with schizophrenia in resource‐poor areas.
2015–2016 Pilot Awards
Health disparity in the United Kingdom: distal and intermediate determinants, and their impacts on future mortality.
Project PI: Haidong Wang
Project Summary: This project seeks to leverage new and ongoing work into the subnational burden of disease in the United Kingdom to examine what impact social, economic, and behavioral factors have in these results. We then make scenario-based forecasts utilizing the estimated relationships between aforementioned factors and mortality. The results of this work will be of broad importance and will not only support measures to improve health outcomes in the UK, but will provide international insight into how the US should view its own health challenges. In particular, as the US works to implement some of the strategies that the UK has long provided (e.g., free universal health care access), understanding the factors that impede or facilitate the success of these programs will be critical for our own strategic development and evaluation.
Wealth and health in aging populations: a study of how economic development effects mortality and morbidity in older populations throughout the world.
Project PI: Joseph Dieleman
Project Summary: This project will use measures of mortality and morbidity, disaggregated by age and sex for 188 countries around the world, to identify the effects of economic development on health throughout the life cycle. In addition, it will identify the population subgroups whose health is most susceptible to economic growth and decline. Finally, it will explore how the impact of disability at older ages is related to changes in income as groups approach and enter retirement age. While these results will be presented for all-cause mortality and morbidity, it will set a platform to expand these studies to cause-specific analyses in the future.
Pilot Project Guidelines & Eligibility
The 2017–2018 Call for Proposals is now closed.
Pilot project awards are open to social scientists at any institution worldwide who qualify to have principal investigator status within their home institution. Researchers who have not previously worked on the determinants of population health are prioritized, but all eligible applicants are encouraged to apply. While we do not have funding for all ideas, we welcome collaboration and are enthusiastic about engaging in conversation with researchers who are interested in working more closely with us as affiliates of the Center.
Researchers awarded pilots will be offered the opportunity to become affiliates of the Center for Health Trends and Forecasts.