The work plan for SPEM included three work packages (WPs). WP1 focused on learning and developing methodologies. WP2 focused on applying the new methods to explore the association between childhood obesity and healthcare costs. WP3 involved the dissemination of results.
1.2.1 WP1: Methodology development.
Several meetings were organised at the start of the project with supervisor Professor Andrew Jones and advisory panel members. Two research visits to U of Bath were organised to learn the method of sieves, a new methodology used in the project, from Dr Bin Peng. I also sat in two courses related to the project: Health Economics and Evaluation of Health Policy.
During this phase, my work was focused on learning and developing semi- and non-parametric methods for analysing healthcare data at patient level. Outcomes of this phase resulted in two research papers. One explored a large number of econometric models including GLMs and finite mixture models to analyse health-related quality of life. It has been published at Quality of Life Research. The other used the latent class method (or finite mixture model) to analyse patient choice data. The manuscript has been uploaded to the website. Details on completion of the seven tasks are provided in Section 1.1 of the Technical Report.
1.2.2 WP 2: Application of the new methods to investigate how childhood obesity impacts on healthcare costs.
A review of the literature on the relationship between childhood obesity and healthcare costs was undertaken using the snowball/citation search method (based on key papers). In summary, the results on the excess costs of childhood obesity are mixed. It was also found that the literature is dominated by collapsing the BMI z-score into discrete categories, as in Au (2012), which may lose substantial information. This gives our new method an advantage as it models BMI z-score directly. The initial results of the application were presented at a HEDG seminar at U of York for feedback. The seminar also covered the knowledge transfer regarding the LSAC survey and its linkage with Medicare data. A working paper using the new method to explore the association between childhood BMI z-score and healthcare costs has been completed and published as a HEDG working paper.
1.2.3 WP 3: Dissemination of findings.
A summary of the research findings was published on the project website. Related codes were also uploaded for public use. Andrew Jones organised the 28th European Workshop on Econometrics and Health Economics (Leuven, September 2019) which included papers on new econometric methods for analysing health data. I presented the project results and Dr Eugenio Zucchelli was the discussant. A HEDG research away day workshop was organised focusing on dissemination of the results of the project and knowledge transfer of health economics and health econometrics among health economics researchers based at U of York. Project results were also presented at various situations and for different types of audience. One paper from the project has already been published at a peer-reviewed journal. The main output has been published as a HEDG working paper and submitted to Journal of Applied Econometrics. The other paper will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal in 2020.
