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We investigate the impact of the Great Recession in Italy on the incidence of chronic diseases using new individual longitudinal data from Electronic Health Records. We exploit the exogenous shock in the economic conditions occurred in 2008 to estimate heterogeneous effects of an unprecedented rise in local unemployment rates in an individual fixed‐effects model. Our results document that harsh economic downturns have a negative long‐lasting effect on cardiovascular disease and a temporary effect on depression. This effect is heterogeneous across gender, increases with age and is stronger right before the retirement age. An important policy recommendation emerging from this study is that prolonged economic downturns constitute an additional external risk for individual health and not a temporary benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1950s, life expectancy in Europe and the United States has improved at a steady pace, driven mostly by gains at older ages. However, these lives are punctuated by more chronic disease than ever before, contributing to substantial morbidity and disability. Using the Future Elderly Model, we simulate longevity and disability over the remaining lifetime for cohorts of older Europeans and Americans. We see that investment in both treatment and prevention for cancer, diabetes, and heart disease show tremendous promise for breaking Europe and the United States out of the expensive equilibrium we now find ourselves in as a result of demographic gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aging process in OECD countries calls for a better understanding of the future disease prevalence, life expectancy (LE) and patterns of inequalities in health outcomes. In this paper we present the results obtained from several dynamic microsimulation models of the Future Elderly Model family for 12 OECD countries, with the aim of reproducing for the first time comparable long‐term projections in individual health status across OECD countries. We provide projections of LE and prevalence of major chronic conditions and disabilities, overall, by gender and by education. We find that the prevalence of main chronic conditions in Europe is catching‐up with the United States and significant heterogeneity in the evolution of gender and educational gradients. Our findings represent a contribution to support policymakers in designing and implementing effective interventions in the healthcare sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aging is a strong risk factor for many chronic diseases. However, the impact of an aging population on the prevalence of chronic diseases and related healthcare costs are not known. We used a prevalence‐based approach that combines accurate clinical and drug prescription data from Health Search CSD‐LPD. This is a longitudinal observational data set containing computer‐based patient records collected by Italian general practitioners (GP) and up‐to‐date healthcare expenditures data from the SiSSI Project. The analysis is based on data collected by 900 GP on an unbalanced sample of more than 1 million patients aged 35+, observed in different time periods between 2005 and 2014. In 2014, 86% of the Italian adults older than 65 had at least one chronic condition, and 56.7% had two or more. Prevalence of multiple chronic diseases and healthcare utilization increased among older and younger adults between 2004 and 2014. Indeed, in the last 10 years, average number of prescriptions increased by approximately 26%, while laboratory and diagnostic tests by 27%. The average number of DDD prescribed increased with age in all the observed years (from 114 in 2005 to 119.9 in 2014 for the 35–50 age group and from 774.9 to 1,178.1 for the 81+ patients). The alarming rising trends in the prevalence of chronic disease and associated healthcare costs in Italy, as well as in many other developed countries, call for an urgent implementation of interventions that prevent or slow the accumulation of metabolic and molecular damage associated with multiple chronic disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current epidemics of cardiovascular and metabolic noncommunicable diseases have emerged alongside dramatic modifications in lifestyle and living environments. These correspond to changes in our "modern" postwar societies globally characterized by rural-to-urban migration, modernization of agricultural practices, and transportation, climate change, and aging. Evidence suggests that these changes are related to each other, although the social and biological mechanisms as well as their interactions have yet to be uncovered. LongITools, as one of the 9 projects included in the European Human Exposome Network, will tackle this environmental health equation linking multidimensional environmental exposures to the occurrence of cardiovascular and metabolic noncommunicable diseases., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest with regard to the content of this report., (Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of The Environmental Epidemiology. All rights reserved.)