Issue:
There is now an increasing awareness of how occupational exposures can give rise to cancer, despite long latency that has historically prevented attribution of the cancer to work. In particular, there is a growing interest in better understanding the extent of occupational cancers and their economic burden to society. Yet assessing the economic burden of occupational cancer has rarely been performed. The objective of this study is to estimate the economic burden of occupational cancer in Canada. We will use a prevalence cost study approach which encompasses costs in a given year for individuals across the disease trajectory. Morbidity and mortality burden will be estimated separately before aggregation because morbidity costs will only include costs from one year, whereas mortality costs will include costs associated with all years lost due to premature mortality.
Objectives:
• To estimate the direct costs of hospitalization, physician care, treatment costs.
• To estimate the indirect and health-related quality-of-life costs such as lost output in the paid labour force, activity loss in non-paid roles, and the intrinsic value of health.
Anticipated Results:
Burden of disease studies provide insight into the magnitudes of the health loss and the cost of a disease to society. Information on the economic burden is extremely useful for government and industry decision making on the benefits of investing in prevention-related efforts, such as exposure reduction and increased enforcement of government regulations. In cases where best practices for prevention are not clear, burden estimates can help priorities research and development. Key audiences are policy makers, workers, employers and physicians.
Investigators:
Emile Tompa, Doug Hyatt, Chris McLeod
