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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Rachel Massey, Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University, 44 Teele Avenue, Somerville, MA 02144, 617-627-6793, rachel.massey@tufts.edu

Environmental exposures are implicated in a range of illnesses and disabilities, including cancer, asthma, and developmental disorders. In addition to causing human suffering, these illnesses and disabilities create economic costs. Preventable illnesses and disabilities associated with environmental exposures can impose significant costs on families, health care systems, and education systems.

This presentation will discuss a study of the costs of children's illnesses associated with toxic exposures in Massachusetts. The study analyzed the costs associated with five major areas in children that have been links to preventable environmental exposures: children's cancers, asthma, neurobehavioral disorders, and birth defects. We applied the concept of the “environmentally attributable fraction” (EAF) of an illness, where EAF is the estimated percentage of cases of an illness that result from an environmental exposure. Our estimate of direct and indirect costs ranges from $1.1 to $1.6 billion annually in Massachusetts. The presentation will also include a brief comparison with costs in other sample states, including California and New York.

In addition to presenting cost estimates, the presentation will include a discussion of the methodological issues that must be addressed in the effort to calculate these costs. The discussion will cover a variety of approaches that economists have taken to estimating costs of illness.

Learning Objectives:

• Explain the concept of “environmentally attributable fraction” (EAF) of diseases and disabilities.
• Identify the principal methodological challenges in estimating costs of illness.
• Present order-of-magnitude estimates of the costs of environmentally attributable illnesses in children Massachusetts study.

Keywords: Environmental Exposures, Economic Analysis

Related Web page: www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/policy_research/healthEnvironment.html

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation