A Dual-Phase Health Capital Model and Its Application to Health Co-benefit Modelling of Decarbonisation

This thesis is developed in the context of investigating the health co-benefit of decarbonisation. Health co-benefit refers to the collateral benefit which arises from decarbonisation policies external to the main intended benefit of climate change mitigation via the reduction of Greenhouse Gases (GHG). Health co-benefit of this kind often arises via the corresponding reduction in air pollutants when GHG is reduced. This is because GHG and air pollutants such as particulate matter are often derived from the same source – the combustion of fossil fuels which drive economic activities. Existing literature in the health co-benefit of decarbonisation fail to give consider the effect of socio-economic variables such as income and education on the expected health co-benefits, and this is where the thesis begins. The backdrop of health co-benefit modelling and the need to incorporate socioeconomic considerations provide the impetus to develop a health economics model. However, in many ways this health economic model deviates from the health co-benefit studies methodologically and instead follows the tradition of the Health Capital Model developed by Grossman (1972). This is due to the micro-economic nature of this health economic model which employs standard economic theory and technique of optimisation, which differs from the fundamentally empirically driven approach of health co-benefit studies. The health economic model developed here is an opportunity to address some of the short-comings of the Health Capital Model. The health co-benefit background however provides some concrete context and inspiration for the application of the theoretical insights which can be drawn from this model. The main contribution of the model develop in this thesis from the theoretical point of view lies in the division of the lifecycle analysis of health into two distinct but related phases of childhood and adulthood. The two phases are specified with different assumptions reflecting the differing characteristics of childhood and adulthood. The most important distinction between the two phases is the manner in which investment in health capital (using time and goods resources) enters the modelling framework. In the childhood phase, health investment augments or increases the existing stock of health capital, while during the adulthood phase health investment prevents the decline of health but does not increase its stock. I believe this better reflects the biological behaviour of health over one’s life than the HCM which implicitly assumes that new stock of health and existing stock are perfectly substitutable. In my model, this substitutability is possible only during the childhood corresponding with the body and mental development. On the other hand, during adulthood when them body no longer grows, health investment may only preserve health. After developing the model, I went about to test it empirically. I used the Understanding Society youth questionnaire to test the child model and the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to test the adulthood model. Due to the way that optimisation problem was specified, the terminal end time conditional in the optimal control model became another endogenous variable. This variable is treated empirically as the life expectancy at the national level. I find that in general the empirical data strongly supports the theoretical propositions of my model. It should be noted here that since the main contribution of this thesis is in theoretical development, the empirical efforts were designed primarily with the intention of validating the propositions of the model, and not really for direct policy application. This is also reinforced by the use of ordered logit models where the coefficients of the independent variables on the dependent variable generally have no meaning, where we only concentrate on the signs of the relationship. Having successfully developed the model, it is applied in two policy settings. Firstly, through reformulation of the model gives the inclusion of socio-economic variables in the measure of Relative Risk (RR) a theoretical grounding. We utilised the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data to compute RR across 180 countries in the world and regressed with World Bank data on ambient particulate matter pollution as well as GDP per capita. The former variable represents the exogenous rate of depreciation while the latter socio-economic variables, particularly income. I find that the RR is negatively associated with the GDP per capita at the national level. Using the estimated coefficients with the help of Professor Crawford-Brown we attempted to forecast how GDP per capita will interact with the health co-benefits of decarbonisation under a range of future scenarios. The second application of the model is in its use to predict the inequality implications of decarbonisation policy. This is performed by taking the second order partial derivative of an endogenous variable such as health, as will be described in detail later. This approach is sufficiently flexible to accommodate the prediction of inequality over range of policies and variables. The inequality implications and predictions according to this model are not tested empirically here. However, they are perhaps the most fruitful area for future research.Three Guiness Trust in which I was employed as a research assistan

World-Wide FINGERS Network: A global approach to risk reduction and prevention of dementia

© 2020 The Authors. Alzheimer\u27s & Dementia published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Alzheimer\u27s Association Reducing the risk of dementia can halt the worldwide increase of affected people. The multifactorial and heterogeneous nature of late-onset dementia, including Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD), indicates a potential impact of multidomain lifestyle interventions on risk reduction. The positive results of the landmark multidomain Finnish Geriatric Intervention Study to Prevent Cognitive Impairment and Disability (FINGER) support such an approach. The World-Wide FINGERS (WW-FINGERS), launched in 2017 and including over 25 countries, is the first global network of multidomain lifestyle intervention trials for dementia risk reduction and prevention. WW-FINGERS aims to adapt, test, and optimize the FINGER model to reduce risk across the spectrum of cognitive decline—from at-risk asymptomatic states to early symptomatic stages—in different geographical, cultural, and economic settings. WW-FINGERS aims to harmonize and adapt multidomain interventions across various countries and settings, to facilitate data sharing and analysis across studies, and to promote international joint initiatives to identify globally implementable and effective preventive strategies

Towards a muon collider

A muon collider would enable the big jump ahead in energy reach that is needed for a fruitful exploration of fundamental interactions. The challenges of producing muon collisions at high luminosity and 10 TeV centre of mass energy are being investigated by the recently-formed International Muon Collider Collaboration. This Review summarises the status and the recent advances on muon colliders design, physics and detector studies. The aim is to provide a global perspective of the field and to outline directions for future work

Towards a Muon Collider

A muon collider would enable the big jump ahead in energy reach that is needed for a fruitful exploration of fundamental interactions. The challenges of producing muon collisions at high luminosity and 10 TeV centre of mass energy are being investigated by the recently-formed International Muon Collider Collaboration. This Review summarises the status and the recent advances on muon colliders design, physics and detector studies. The aim is to provide a global perspective of the field and to outline directions for future work.Comment: 118 pages, 103 figure

Joint analysis of three genome-wide association studies of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in Chinese populations

We conducted a joint (pooled) analysis of three genome-wide association studies (GWAS) 1-3 of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) in ethnic Chinese (5,337 ESCC cases and 5,787 controls) with 9,654 ESCC cases and 10,058 controls for follow-up. In a logistic regression model adjusted for age, sex, study, and two eigenvectors, two new loci achieved genome-wide significance, marked by rs7447927 at 5q31.2 (per-allele odds ratio (OR) = 0.85, 95% CI 0.82-0.88; P=7.72x10−20) and rs1642764 at 17p13.1 (per-allele OR= 0.88, 95% CI 0.85-0.91; P=3.10x10−13). rs7447927 is a synonymous single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in TMEM173 and rs1642764 is an intronic SNP in ATP1B2, near TP53. Furthermore, a locus in the HLA class II region at 6p21.32 (rs35597309) achieved genome-wide significance in the two populations at highest risk for ESSC (OR=1.33, 95% CI 1.22-1.46; P=1.99x10−10). Our joint analysis identified new ESCC susceptibility loci overall as well as a new locus unique to the ESCC high risk Taihang Mountain region

Towards a muon collider

A muon collider would enable the big jump ahead in energy reach that is needed for a fruitful exploration of fundamental interactions. The challenges of producing muon collisions at high luminosity and 10 TeV centre of mass energy are being investigated by the recently-formed International Muon Collider Collaboration. This Review summarises the status and the recent advances on muon colliders design, physics and detector studies. The aim is to provide a global perspective of the field and to outline directions for future work

Erratum: Towards a muon collider

The original online version of this article was revised: The additional reference [139] has been added. Tao Han’s ORICD ID has been incorrectly assigned to Chengcheng Han and Chengcheng Han’s ORCID ID to Tao Han. Yang Ma’s ORCID ID has been incorrectly assigned to Lianliang Ma, and Lianliang Ma’s ORCID ID to Yang Ma. The original article has been corrected