• This project aims to estimate how cognitive health is associated with level of unpaid work and community engagement in the PATH through Life study and Memory and Aging Study, and compare these findings to overseas studies. This will inform policy related to retirement and pension age.
     
    Publications

    • Hosking, D. E., & Anstey, K. J. (2016). The economics of cognitive impairment: volunteering and cognitive function in the HILDA survey. Gerontology, 62(5), 536-540. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26963661
    • Hosking, D. E., Jiang, D., Sargent-Cox, K. A., & Anstey, K. J. (2017). Informant-Reported Cognitive Decline and Activity Engagement across Four Years in a Community Sample. Gerontology, 63(5), 469-478. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28595181
  • This project aims to model the cost of cognitive impairment in Australia conditioned on varying population levels of modifiable risk and protective factors. Analyses will initially focus on sedentary lifestyle and different levels of physical activity to provide estimates of the potential benefits of behaviour change. 

  • The population attributable risk of specific risk factors for late-life dementia has been estimated for the United States and globally, but not Australia. We have recently demonstrated that current methods have limitations as they don't consider competing risk or the complex nature of some risk factors such as obesity which have non-linear relationships with age. This project estimates PAR for common risk factors using Australian and international datasets, taking into account competing risks.
     
    Publications

    • Ashby-Mitchell, K., Burns, R., Shaw, J., & Anstey, K. J. (2017). Proportion of dementia in Australia explained by common modifiable risk factors. Alzheimer's research & therapy, 9(1), 11.
  • Cognitive health expectancy measures the proportion of lifespan spent in cognitive 'health' as distinct from the proportion of life expectancy spent with cognitive disability. Current work on cognitive health expectancy hasn't examined how it varies between chronic diseases that affect cognitive health. For example, compared with diabetes, cardiovascular disease may be associated with a shorter or longer time spent without cognitive disability. This project estimates the years spent with cognitive impairment for chronic diseases. 

  • Jenkins, L. O. D., Butterworth, P., & Anstey, K. J. (2016). A longitudinal analysis of general practitioner service use by patients with mild cognitive disorders in Australia. Dementia and geriatric cognitive disorders, 41(5-6), 324-333. https://doi.org/10.1159/000447123