Center on Population Health and Aging

Pilot Projects

Pilot Project 8: The Effect of Health Insurance on the Health of Middle-Aged Adults

Principal Investigator: Pamela Farley Short (Penn State). Co-investigators: Frank Lawrence (Penn State), France Marie Priez (Penn State), Linda Collins (Penn State), George Farkas (Penn State), Melissa Hardy (Penn State)

Specific Aims

The proposed pilot study has two specific aims. The primary aim is to conduct preliminary studies to inform the submission of an R01 grant proposal to the National Institute on Aging (NIA). The aim of the R01 will be to estimate the effect of being uninsured in the years leading up to Medicare enrollment at age 65 on health and health care utilization after age 65 (when the cost of each persons health care is borne largely by Medicare). Short-term and long-term effects of insurance status on health will be estimated with individual growth models fit to multiple waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Individual growth models are widely used in studies of human development and aging, and in demography and epidemiology, but are relatively unknown to the field of health services research. A secondary aim is to share lessons learned from the pilot study with faculty and graduate students at Penn State, who may see opportunities for innovative research in their own areas of study in the analysis of the individual trajectories in HRS. This will mainly be accomplished with presentations about the studys methods and findings in regularly scheduled seminar series around the University.

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