INSIGHT
Tip of the Iceberg: Assessing the Global Socioeconomic Costs of Alzheimer’s Disease
The Shift Health team of Youssef El-Hayek, Ryan Wiley and Charles Khoury worked with co-authors from the University of Exeter, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Barcelonaβeta Brain Research Center, and Banner Sun Health Research Institute, to catalogue different types of Alzheimer’s-related socioeconomic costs, assess the challenges and gaps of existing approaches to measuring these costs, and discuss implications for stakeholders including policymakers, healthcare systems, associations, advocacy groups, clinicians and researchers.
This paper recommends developing and implementing better tools, measures and programs to more accurately assess the real-world costs of ADRD; establishing pre-competitive investments in real-world population observational studies and registries across the continuum of aging, cognitive impairment, and dementia; and establishing a better understanding of which stakeholder is ultimately absorbing the costs to inform coordinated funding mechanisms for interventions and care paradigms.