The deepening complexities of aged care, including changing morbidities and funding for long term care insurance and investment, will be investigated at an international conference at UNSW Sydney this week.
Long-term care is one of the most rapidly growing industries in the world and the new frontier of policy development, especially in Australasia where the number of people aged 80 and above will quadruple to more than 250 million by 2050. In Australia, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, over a quarter of a million people (259,000) were using residential care, home care or transition care services on 30 June 2017. In addition, in 2016-17 almost 723,000 people were assisted in their home under the Commonwealth Home Support Program.
The 4th International Conference of Long-term Care Directors and Administrators is designed to inform professionals about the latest developments in assistive technologies, aged care models for the future, the management of cognitive ageing and decline, falls prevention, long-term care insurance and investment, aged care workforce, and other topics germane to aged care facilities.
Keynote speaker Carol Jagger, AXA Professor of Epidemiology of Ageing at Newcastle University, UK, and Associate Investigator at CEPAR, argues that whilst we are living longer, there is much evidence to suggest the extra years of life are not all healthy ones.
“Moreover, how trends in morbidity will play out in the future have only been speculated since the impact on care needs of the rising prevalence of diabetes and obesity and the continued falls in stroke and cardiovascular mortality are unknown,” she says.
Professor Jagger will review past trends in care needs to show how the older population in England has changed over the last 20 years, and will present how trends in morbidity will play out over the next 20 years from a new microsimulation model PACSim. She will also discuss possible responses.
Discussant Mark Cooper-Stanbury, Head, Disability and Ageing Unit at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, will discuss the issue from an Australian perspective.
Conference details
The 4th International Conference of Long-term Care Directors and Administrators is on Wednesday to Friday, August 1 to 3, at UNSW Sydney AGSM and John Niland Scientia buildings (access via Gate 11, Kensington Campus).
Carol Jagger's keynote address, "Future trends in morbidity: Implications for long-term care", will be on Thursday, 2 August at 2pm.
The full program is available online.
The conference is presented by:
ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR): cepar.edu.au
UNSW Business School: business.unsw.edu.au
Media contacts
Julian Lorkin 02 9385 9887 j.lorkin@unsw.edu.au UNSW Communications
Silke Weiss 02 9385 7359 s.weiss@unsw.edu.au CEPAR Communications