FSI’s researchers assess health and medicine through the lenses of economics, nutrition and politics. They’re studying and influencing public health policies of local and national governments and the roles that corporations and nongovernmental organizations play in providing health care around the world. Scholars look at how governance affects citizens’ health, how children’s health care access affects the aging process and how to improve children’s health in Guatemala and rural China. They want to know what it will take for people to cook more safely and breathe more easily in developing countries.
FSI professors investigate how lifestyles affect health. What good does gardening do for older Americans? What are the benefits of eating organic food or growing genetically modified rice in China? They study cost-effectiveness by examining programs like those aimed at preventing the spread of tuberculosis in Russian prisons. Policies that impact obesity and undernutrition are examined; as are the public health implications of limiting salt in processed foods and the role of smoking among men who work in Chinese factories. FSI health research looks at sweeping domestic policies like the Affordable Care Act and the role of foreign aid in affecting the price of HIV drugs in Africa.
Child Gender, Living Arrangements and Maternal Labor Supply: Evidence from Rural China
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Call for applications: Postdoctoral fellowship in contemporary Asia
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The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) at Stanford is now accepting applications for the Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellowship in Contemporary Asia, an opportunity made available to two junior scholars for research and writing on Asia.
Fellows conduct research on contemporary political, economic or social change in the Asia-Pacific region, and contribute to Shorenstein APARC’s publications, conferences and related activities. To read about this year’s fellows, please click here.
The fellowship is a 10-mo. appointment during the 2017-18 academic year, and carries a salary rate of $52,000 plus $2,000 for research expenses.
For further information and to apply, please click here. The application deadline is Dec. 16, 2016.
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Trends in Disability in a Super-Aging Society: Adapting the Future Elderly Model to Japan
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Call for papers: Conference on the economics of ageing
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The Asia Health Policy Program at Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, in collaboration with scholars from Stanford Health Policy's Center on Demography and Economics of Health and Aging, the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and the Next World Program, is soliciting papers for the third annual workshop on the economics of ageing titled Financing Longevity: The Economics of Pensions, Health Insurance, Long-term Care and Disability Insurance held at Stanford from April 24-25, 2017, and for a related special issue of the Journal of the Economics of Ageing.
The triumph of longevity can pose a challenge to the fiscal integrity of public and private pension systems and other social support programs disproportionately used by older adults. High-income countries offer lessons – frequently cautionary tales – for low- and middle-income countries about how to design social protection programs to be sustainable in the face of population ageing. Technological change and income inequality interact with population ageing to threaten the sustainability and perceived fairness of conventional financing for many social programs. Promoting longer working lives and savings for retirement are obvious policy priorities; but in many cases the fiscal challenges are even more acute for other social programs, such as insurance systems for medical care, long-term care, and disability. Reform of entitlement programs is also often politically difficult, further highlighting how important it is for developing countries putting in place comprehensive social security systems to take account of the macroeconomic implications of population ageing.
The objective of the workshop is to explore the economics of ageing from the perspective of sustainable financing for longer lives. The workshop will bring together researchers to present recent empirical and theoretical research on the economics of ageing with special (yet not exclusive) foci on the following topics:
- Public and private roles in savings and retirement security
- Living and working in an Age of Longevity: Lessons for Finance
- Defined benefit, defined contribution, and innovations in design of pension programs
- Intergenerational and equity implications of different financing mechanisms for pensions and social insurance
- The impact of population aging on health insurance financing
- Economic incentives of long-term care insurance and disability insurance systems
- Precautionary savings and social protection system generosity
- Elderly cognitive function and financial planning
- Evaluation of policies aimed at increasing health and productivity of older adults
- Population ageing and financing economic growth
- Tax policies’ implications for capital deepening and investment in human capital
- The relationship between population age structure and capital market returns
- Evidence on policies designed to address disparities – gender, ethnic/racial, inter-regional, urban/rural – in old-age support
- The political economy of reforming pension systems as well as health, long-term care and disability insurance programs
Submission for the workshop
Interested authors are invited to submit a 1-page abstract by Sept. 30, 2016, to Karen Eggleston at karene@stanford.edu. The authors of accepted abstracts will be notified by Oct. 15, 2016, and completed draft papers will be expected by April 1, 2017.
Economy-class travel and accommodation costs for one author of each accepted paper will be covered by the organizers.
Invited authors are expected to submit their paper to the Journal of the Economics of Ageing. A selection of these papers will (assuming successful completion of the review process) be published in a special issue.
Submission to the special issue
Authors (also those interested who are not attending the workshop) are invited to submit papers for the special issue in the Journal of the Economics of Ageing by Aug. 1, 2017. Submissions should be made online. Please select article type “SI Financing Longevity.”
About the Next World Program
The Next World Program is a joint initiative of Harvard University’s Program on the Global Demography of Aging, the WDA Forum, Stanford’s Asia Health Policy Program, and Fudan University’s Working Group on Comparative Ageing Societies. These institutions organize an annual workshop and a special issue in the Journal of the Economics of Ageing on an important economic theme related to ageing societies.
More information can be found in the PDF below.
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Policy Challenges from Demographic Change in China and India
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The world’s two most populous countries face numerous policy challenges from rapid demographic change. Drawing on social science expertise from China, India, and the United States, the contributors examine the social and economic challenges for policies across a range of domains, from China’s changed family planning policies and India’s efforts to address gender imbalance, to both countries’ policies regarding old-age support, human capital investment, poverty alleviation, and broader issues of governance.
Sections focus on:
- Policy Challenges and Economic Impact
- Fertility and Sex Imbalance
- Human Capital and Urbanization
- Population Aging
Desk or examination copies can be ordered from Stanford University Press.
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2016 Annual Forum on Community Health Services and Primary Health Care Reform in China
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This forum will focus on the importance of community health services and primary health care reform in China and discuss the deepening efforts to establish a two-way referral system to help boost access and equality of high-quality medical resources and basic public health services. At this year’s annual forum, distinguished experts will present research examining China’s emerging hierarchical medical system (including insurance payments, referral arrangements, and chronic and acute disease treatment initiatives). Policymakers, providers, and researchers will introduce China's overall policies towards this new system as well as describe the practice and challenges of primary care delivery and innovative approaches of internet-based and integrated medical care systems.
Agenda
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Presentation English
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Xiaofang Han
Former Director of Beijing Municipal Development and Reform Commission
Xinbo Liao
Inspector of The Health and Family Planning Commission of Guangdong Province
Jifu Zhan
Deputy Mayor of Sanming, Fujian province
Su Xu
Deputy Director General of Shanghai Health and Family Planning Commission, Director of Shanghai health care reform office
"and other speakers; please see agenda"
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Health economists press for chronic disease as top agenda item
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Nearly 100 health economists from across the United States signed a pledge urging U.S. presidential candidates to make chronic disease a policy priority. Karen Eggleston, a scholar of comparative healthcare systems and director of Stanford’s Asia Health Policy Program, is one of the signatories.
The pledge calls upon the candidates to reset the national healthcare agenda to better address chronic disease, which causes seven out of 10 deaths in America and affects the economy through lost productivity and disability.
Read the pledge below.
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Shorenstein APARC announces its 2016-17 postdoctoral fellows
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The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), in pursuit of training the next generation of scholars on contemporary Asia, has selected three postdoctoral fellows for the 2016-17 academic year. The cohort includes two Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellows and one Developing Asia Health Policy Fellow; they carry a broad range of interests from hospital reform to the economic consequences of elite politics in Asia.
The fellows will begin their year of academic study and research at Stanford this fall.
Shorenstein APARC has for more than a decade sponsored numerous junior scholars who come to the university to work closely with Stanford faculty, develop their dissertations for publication, participate in workshops and seminars, and present their research to the broader community. In 2007, the Asia Health Policy Program began its fellowship program to specifically support scholars undertaking comparative research on Asia health and healthcare policy.
The 2016-17 fellows’ bios and their research plans are listed below:
Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellows
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Developing Asia Health Policy Postdoctoral Fellow
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A Comparative Study of Catastrophic Payment in Asia: A Revisit
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Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is a well-embraced policy goal in the 21th century, which aims to ensure financial risk protection while assuring access to quality care. However, up to this date, out-of-pocket (OOP) payment remains the principal means of financing health care throughout much of Asia, which leaves people financially unprotected in the face of illness. High OOP payment at point of service is likely to either make people become medically impoverished after paying for health care, or force people to forgo treatment needed, which is detrimental to one’s health. This presentation is based on empirical results derived from EQUITAP (Equity in Asia-Pacific Health Systems) Project II on catastrophic payment that aims to estimate the magnitude and distribution of OOP payments for health care in 23 countries and territories in the Asia-Pacific Region in 2007. We also draw comparisons to the results in 2000 as changes arise due to various reforms implemented since 2000.
Jui-fen Rachel Lu, is the Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University, and Professor in the Graduate Institute of Business and Management and Department of Health Care Management, College of Management, at Chang Gung University in Taiwan, where she teaches comparative health systems, health economics, and health care financing and has served as department chair (2000-2004), Associate Dean (2009-2010) and Dean of the College of Management (2010-2013). She earned her B.S. from National Taiwan University, and her M.S. and Sc.D. from Harvard University, and she was also a Takemi Fellow at Harvard (2004-2005) and is an Honorary Professor at Hong Kong University (2007-2017). She cofounded the Taiwan Society of Health Economics (TaiSHE) in 2008 and is currently the President of TaiSHE (2014-2017). Professor Lu also serves as a board director for the International Health Economics Association (iHEA) (2016) and a member of the Arrow Award Committee for iHEA (2014-2016).Image
Her research interests are in assessing the impact of the NHI program on health care markets and household consumption patterns, and comparative health systems in the Asia-Pacific region with a focus on equity performance. She is a long-time and active member of the Equitap (Equity in Asia-Pacific Health Systems) research network. Professor Lu has also been appointed to serve on several advisory boards to the Taiwan Ministry of Health and Welfare and National Health Insurance Administration, Ministry of Science and Technology.
She received the Minister Wang Jin Naw Memorial Award for Best Paper in Health Care Management in 2002 and was the recipient of the IBM Faculty Award in 2009.
Jui-fen Rachel Lu, Sc.D.
Fulbright Visiting Scholar, Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University
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