Editorial - Special Issue on Health

This special issue is a collection of articles that had their origins as papers presented at the 1st General Conference of the International Microsimulation Association (IMA) “Celebrating 50 years of Microsimulation” Vienna, Austria, 20th to 22nd August 2007. The papers all discuss the development and application to policy of dedicated health microsimulation models. These models and applications are testimony to the realisation of Orcutt’s original vision in the late 1950's and early 1960's of applying microsimulation techniques to socio-economic modelling, expanding from the earlier focus on taxation and public transfers into the areas of health and ageing.health, microsimulation

Pioneering Women\u27s Committee Struggles with Hard Times

[Excerpt] The Women\u27s Committee of IUE Local 201, established informally in 1976 and officially in 1978, is one of the oldest and longest-lived union women\u27s committees in the country. It took root and thrived within a large and overwhelmingly male General Electric manufacturing complex in the Greater Boston area and within one of the oldest, most democratic and most progressive union locals in the labor movement. For the past 11 years, the Committee has battled an extremely insensitive and recalcitrant GE management over a wide range of issues — winning substantial victories for training and entry of women into skilled jobs, for comparable worth wage adjustments in traditional jobs, and for pregnancy disability benefits and parental leave. Committee members have counseled hundreds of women and spearheaded fights for individual grievances on pregnancy disability, sexual harassment and discrimination. Within the local, the Committee\u27s activities have created a more positive climate for women to become stewards and committee members and to run for offices on the Policy Board. Most of the Committee leaders and many of the active members are a key part of the progressive wing within Local 201. But the local now faces massive layoffs triggered by GE\u27s transfer of work to other plants in the U.S. and abroad. The cuts began in June 1987 and are expected to reach 3,000 or 4,000 members by the middle of 1989. With its ranks being cut in half, Local 201 membership is understandably uneasy about its future, and many of the Women\u27s Committee\u27s past accomplishments are now in jeopardy. As preparations begin for the national GE contract, which expires in June, GE is pushing for major concessions as the price to pay for job security. The progressive movement is faced with the dual tasks of opposing concessions and pushing to save jobs. In this context, the Women\u27s Committee\u27s challenge is to push ahead with its agenda in a very difficult political climate. As 1988 begins, both Local 201 and its Women\u27s Committee are in rapid transition

The KCMO stream setback ordinance: Science, public involvement, and water quality protection

This case study evaluates the suitability of the Kansas City, Missouri Stream Setback Ordinance as a model ordinance that illustrates the integration of science and public involvement in an effort to achieve water quality protection. Nationally, there is a vast knowledge base on appropriate riparian buffer widths that can provide the scientific foundation many communities are looking for to legally and politically defend a riparian buffer program. Many communities are recognizing the economic value of protecting water resources for the benefit of public infrastructure, health, and community quality of life. The City of Kansas City ordinance meets multiple community objectives from stormwater management to recreation and wildlife habitat, while minimizing the impact to developable land. By taking an ecosystem approach to development of the setback ordinance, the City of Kansas City ordinance balances environmental, economic, and social factors. The City can conserve functional riparian forest buffers which can enhance and improve water quality, and provide habitats for wildlife and recreational opportunities for people, and in turn enhance quality of life within the communities that make up Kansas City. Implementation of the setback ordinance illustrates that Kansas City has taken a major step toward improving water quality and protecting other valuable resources that will require less economic input while providing greater social and environmental benefits. This study clearly illustrates the integral components community planners and decision-makers can use in the development of buffer ordinances that meet their ecosystem planning goals

Luminescence induced in liquids and gases by alpha particle excitation

The action of ionizing radiations on water and aqueous solutions has been the subject of investigation for many years. In that time a considerable amount of quantitative evidence has been accumulated, but agreement between different authors is limited. The chemical effects produced by radiation are fairly well known, but the physical action which produces the reactive species is not very well understood. Theoretical work is based mainly on results obtained in the gas phase and the extrapolation to the condensed state is not necessarily valid. The following brief survey covers the most generally accepted evidence and the theories which have been developed from it.Because ionization is the most conspicuous feature of the radiations involved, emphasis has been directed on the ions as the source of the chemical action, although, depending on the system, only about half the energy of the radiation is used in their production. The possible role of excitation, although recognized, has received much less attention

Predicting the need for aged care services at the small area level: the CAREMOD spatial microsimulation model

Most industrialised societies face rapid population ageing over the next two decades, including sharp increases in the number of people aged 85 years and over. As a result, the supply of and demand for aged care services has assumed increasing policy prominence. The likely spatial distribution of the need for aged care services is critical for planners and policy makers. This article describes the development of a regional microsimulation model of the need for aged care in New South Wales, a state of Australia. It details the methods involved in reweighting the 1998 Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers, a national level dataset, against the 2001 Census to produce synthetic small area estimates at the statistical local area level. Validation shows that survey variables not constrained in the weighting process can provide unreliable local estimates. A proposed solution to this problem is outlined, involving record cloning, value imputation and alignment. Indicative disability estimates arising from this process are then discussed.Disability, ageing, spatial analysis, aged care, cloning; imputation; alignment; NATSEM

Challenges and Solutions in Constructing a Microsimulation Model of the Use and Costs of Medical Services in Australia

This paper describes the development of a microsimulation model =HealthMod‘ which simulates the use and costs of medical and related services by Australian families. Australia has a universal social insurance scheme known as =Medicare‘ which provides all Australians with access to free or low-cost essential medical services. These services are provided primarily by general practitioners as well as specialist doctors but also include diagnostic and imaging services. Individuals may pay a direct out-of pocket contribution if fees charged for services are higher than the reimbursement schedule set by government. HealthMod is based on the Australian 2001 National Health Survey. This survey had a number of deficiencies in terms of modelling the national medical benefits scheme. The article outlines three major methodological steps that had to be taken in the model construction: the imputation of synthetic families, the imputation of short-term health conditions, and the annualisation of doctor visits and costs. Some preliminary results on the use of doctor services subsidised through Australia‘s Medicare are presented.Economic microsimulation modelling, medical services, use and costs, Australia

Studying the effects of in-vehicle information systems on driver visual behaviour – implications for design

In-vehicle information systems (IVIS) are a common feature in modern vehicles. The interaction of drivers with IVIS when driving must be considered to minimise distraction whilst maintaining the benefits provided. This research investigates the glance behaviours of drivers, assessed from video data, when using two functions – a personal navigation device (study 1) and a green driving advisory device (study 2). The main focus was to establish the number of glances of 2 seconds or more to the IVIS and relate this to driver safety (as stipulated in new guidelines for use of IVIS proposed by NHTSA). In study 1, the percentage of eyes- off-road time for drivers was much greater in the experimental (with device) condition compared to the baseline condition (14.3% compared to 6.7%) but, whilst glances to the personal navigation device accounted for the majority of the increase, there were very few which exceeded 2 seconds. Drivers in study 2 spent on average 4.3% of their time looking at the system, at an average of 0.43 seconds per glance; no glances exceeded 2 seconds. The research showed that ordinary use of IVIS (excluding manual interaction) does not lead to driver visual distraction and therefore the impact on safety is minimal. The results of the study have important design implications for future in-vehicle information systems

Revealed Preferences for Risk and Ambiguity

We replicate the essentials of the Huettel et al. (2006) experiment on choice under uncertainty with 30 Yale undergraduates, where subjects make 200 pair-wise choices between risky and ambiguous lotteries. Inferences about the independence of economic preferences for risk and ambiguity are derived from estimation of a mixed logit model, where the choice probabilities are functions of two random effects: the proxies for risk-aversion and ambiguity-aversion. Our principal empirical finding is that we cannot reject the null hypothesis that risk and ambiguity are independent in economic choice under uncertainty. This finding is consistent with the hypothesized independence of the neural mechanisms governing economic choices under risk and ambiguity, suggested by the double dissociation-fMRI study reported in Huettel et al.Mixed logit, Risk-aversion, Ambiguity-aversion

The legacy of uncertainty

An historical account is given of the circumstances whereby the uncertainty relations were introduced into physics by Heisenberg. The criticisms of QED on measurement-theoretical grounds by Landau and Peierls are then discussed, as well as the response to them by Bohr and Rosenfeld. Finally, some examples are given of how the new freedom to advance radical proposals, in part the result of the revolution brought about by 'uncertainty,' was implemented in dealing with the new phenomena encountered in elementary particle physics in the 1930's

Enhancing the Australian National Health Survey Data for Use in a Microsimulation Model of Pharmaceutical Drug Usage and Cost

While static microsimulation models of the tax-transfer system are now available throughout the developed world, health microsimulation models are much rarer. This is, at least in part, due to the difficulties in creating adequate base micro-datasets upon which the microsimulation models can be constructed. In sharp contrast to tax-transfer modelling, no readily available microdata set typically contains all the health status, health service usage and socio-demographic information required for a sophisticated health microsimulation model. This paper describes three new techniques developed to overcome survey data limitations when constructing \'MediSim\', a microsimulation model of the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Comparable statistical matching and data imputation techniques may be of relevance to other modellers, as they attempt to overcome similar data deficiencies. The 2001 national health survey (NHS) was the main data source for MediSim. However, the NHS has a number of limitations for use in a microsimulation model. To compensate for this, we statistically matched the NHS with another national survey to create synthetic families and get a complete record for every individual within each family. Further, we used complementary datasets to impute short term health conditions and prescribed drug usage for both short- and long-term health conditions. The application of statistical matching methods and use of complementary data sets significantly improved the usefulness of the NHS as a base dataset for MediSim.Base Data, Drug Usage, Microsimulation, Pharmaceutical Benefits, Scripts, Statistical Matching