Anirban Basu, a professor in the schools of Pharmacy and Public Health at the University of Washington, has received more than $230,000 from the National Institutes of Health to measure the current and future costs of care for people with dementia. The research is part of a sub-grant from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dementia care has substantial economic costs, with consequences for health care systems as well as for the health and well-being of families who provide care for loved ones with dementia.

Basu, also an adjunct professor of economics, will work with Paul Fishman and Lindsay White, a professor and postdoctoral fellow, respectively, in the Department of Health Services at the UW School of Public Health. In this study, the research team will take steps to improve the measurement of current dementia care and improve the projections of the future burden of the disease.

Researchers aim to estimate the direct and indirect costs of dementia care, including costs to caregivers, and to assess how costs vary with insurance and care providers. They also plan to develop a forecasting model to estimate the future costs of dementia care in order to inform resource allocation decisions.

The study will be conducted in collaboration with Norma Coe, associate professor of medical ethics and health policy at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who leads the parent grant. This research was supported by the National Institute on Aging under award number R01AG049815.