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Modelling the Economic Impact of Reducing Loneliness in Community Dwelling Older People in England

Loneliness has been associated with poor mental health and wellbeing. In England, a 2018 national strategy on loneliness was published, and public health guidelines recommend participation in social activities. In the absence of existing economic evidence, we modelled the potential cost effectivenes...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: McDaid, David, Park, A-La
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7913744/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33546496
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18041426
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author McDaid, David
Park, A-La
author_facet McDaid, David
Park, A-La
author_sort McDaid, David
collection PubMed
description Loneliness has been associated with poor mental health and wellbeing. In England, a 2018 national strategy on loneliness was published, and public health guidelines recommend participation in social activities. In the absence of existing economic evidence, we modelled the potential cost effectiveness of a service that connects lonely older people to social activities against no-intervention. A 5-year Markov model was constructed from a health and social care perspective. Parameters were drawn from the literature, with the intervention structure based on an existing loneliness alleviation programme implemented in several settings across England. Univariate and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were undertaken. The total expected cost per participant in the intervention group is £7131 compared to £6783 in the usual care group with 0.45 loneliness free years (LFY) gained. The incremental cost per LFY gained is £768; in the probabilistic sensitivity analysis the intervention is cost saving in 3.5% of iterations. Potentially such interventions may be cost-effective but are unlikely to be cost-saving even allowing for sustained effects and cumulative adverse health and social care events averted. Empirical studies are needed to determine the cost-effectiveness of these interventions, ideally mapping changes in loneliness to the quality of life, in order to allow the key metric in health economic studies, cost per quality adjusted life year to be estimated.
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spelling pubmed-79137442021-02-28 Modelling the Economic Impact of Reducing Loneliness in Community Dwelling Older People in England McDaid, David Park, A-La Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Loneliness has been associated with poor mental health and wellbeing. In England, a 2018 national strategy on loneliness was published, and public health guidelines recommend participation in social activities. In the absence of existing economic evidence, we modelled the potential cost effectiveness of a service that connects lonely older people to social activities against no-intervention. A 5-year Markov model was constructed from a health and social care perspective. Parameters were drawn from the literature, with the intervention structure based on an existing loneliness alleviation programme implemented in several settings across England. Univariate and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were undertaken. The total expected cost per participant in the intervention group is £7131 compared to £6783 in the usual care group with 0.45 loneliness free years (LFY) gained. The incremental cost per LFY gained is £768; in the probabilistic sensitivity analysis the intervention is cost saving in 3.5% of iterations. Potentially such interventions may be cost-effective but are unlikely to be cost-saving even allowing for sustained effects and cumulative adverse health and social care events averted. Empirical studies are needed to determine the cost-effectiveness of these interventions, ideally mapping changes in loneliness to the quality of life, in order to allow the key metric in health economic studies, cost per quality adjusted life year to be estimated. MDPI 2021-02-03 2021-02 /pmc/articles/PMC7913744/ /pubmed/33546496 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18041426 Text en © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
McDaid, David
Park, A-La
Modelling the Economic Impact of Reducing Loneliness in Community Dwelling Older People in England
title Modelling the Economic Impact of Reducing Loneliness in Community Dwelling Older People in England
title_full Modelling the Economic Impact of Reducing Loneliness in Community Dwelling Older People in England
title_fullStr Modelling the Economic Impact of Reducing Loneliness in Community Dwelling Older People in England
title_full_unstemmed Modelling the Economic Impact of Reducing Loneliness in Community Dwelling Older People in England
title_short Modelling the Economic Impact of Reducing Loneliness in Community Dwelling Older People in England
title_sort modelling the economic impact of reducing loneliness in community dwelling older people in england
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7913744/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33546496
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18041426
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