Research Publications

• Infrastructure
  1. Blakely T, Moss R, Collins J, et al. Proportional multistate lifetable modelling of preventive interventions: concepts, code and worked examples. Int J Epidemiol 2020; 49(5): 1-13. A tutorial-style paper explaining PMSLT modelling as used in SHINE.
  2. Blakely T, Sigglekow F, Irfan M, et al. Disease-related income and economic productivity loss in New Zealand: A longitudinal analysis of linked individual-level data. Plos Med in press. Income loss by disease, used in our PMSLT modelling to estimate productivity gains.
  3. Andersen P, Mizdrak A, Wilson N, Davies A, Bablani L, Blakely T. Disaggregating proportional multistate lifetables by population heterogeneity to estimate intervention impacts on inequalities. medRxiv 2021 and in press Pop H Metrics. Describes our heterogeneity module that disaggregates populations by strata (e.g. SES, CVD absolute risk) for modelling of health gains and costs.
  4. Blakely T, Kvizhinadze G, Atkinson J, Dieleman J, Clarke P. Health system costs for individual and comorbid noncommunicable diseases: An analysis of publicly funded health events from New Zealand. PLoS Med 2019; 16(1): e1002716. A whole of country panel study to estimate excess health expenditure by disease phase (first year of diagnosis, prevalent, last year of life if dying of disease); we use these relativities by disease phase to disaggregate Australian and other country disease expenditure for inputting to PMSLT modelling.
• COVID-19
  1. Blakely T, Wilson T, Andrabi H, Thompson J. 2022 will be better: COVID-19 Pandemic Tradeoffs Modelling. : .Population Interventions Unit, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, 2021. A report summarizing COVID-19 Pandemic Tradeoffs scenarios for ‘living with the virus’ in 2022.
  2. Blakely T, Thompson J, Bablani L, et al. Association of Simulated COVID-19 Policy Responses for Social Restrictions and Lockdowns With Health-Adjusted Life-Years and Costs in Victoria, Australia. JAMA Health Forum 2021; 2(7). Our COVID agent-based model linked to our PMSLT model to estimate HALYs and costs for policy options to manage COVID-19 in 2020 in Victoria, Australia.
  3. Blakely T, Thompson J, Carvalho N, Bablani L, Wilson N, Stevenson M. The probability of the 6-week lockdown in Victoria (commencing 9 July 2020) achieving elimination of community transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Med J Aust 2020; 213(8): 349-51 e1. A pivotal paper that strengthened the case for Australasia to follow an elimination strategy in 2020.
• Diet
  1. Blakely T, Cleghorn C, Mizdrak A, et al. The effect of food taxes and subsidies on population health and health costs: a modelling study. The Lancet Public Health 2020; 5(7): e404-e13. A paper summarizing a large body of NZ work in the Burden of Disease Epidemiology, Equity and Cost-Effectiveness Program (BODE³) on food taxes and subsidies, propagated through PMSLT modelling to quantify health gains and costs.
  2. Bablani L, Ni Mhurchu C, Neal B, Skeels CL, Staub KE, Blakely T. The impact of voluntary front-of-pack nutrition labelling on packaged food reformulation: A difference-in-differences analysis of the Australasian Health Star Rating scheme. PLoS Med 2020; 17(11): e1003427. A natural experiment analysis of the Health Star Rating system’s impact on industry reformulation of food, in both Australia and New Zealand.
• Tobacco
  1. Singh A, Petrović-van der Deen FS, Carvalho N, Lopez AD, Blakely T. Impact of tax and tobacco-free generation on health-adjusted life years in the Solomon Islands: a multistate life table simulation. Tobacco Control 2019; 29(4): 388-97. A ‘proof of principle’ paper applying tobacco PMSLT modelling to the Solomon Islands, drawing on Global Burden of Disease data – an example of ‘scaling out’ in SHINE.
  2. Petrovic-van der Deen FS, Wilson N, Crothers A, Cleghorn CL, Gartner C, Blakely T. Potential Country-level Health and Cost Impacts of Legalizing Domestic Sale of Vaporized Nicotine Products. Epidemiol 2019; 30(3): 396-404. An example of PMSLT modelling applied to e-cigarette liberalization in New Zealand.
  3. Singh A, Wilson N, Blakely T. Simulating future public health benefits of tobacco control interventions – A systematic review of models. Tob Control 2020; Online ahead of print. A critique of existing tobacco intervention modelling, that lays out the criteria we look for in robust and comparable modelling.

Our collaborators

The Population Intervention Unit benefits from the collaboration of many Australasian and international collaborations, including:

• The Burden of Disease Epidemiology, Equity and Cost-Effectiveness Programme (BODE3) at the University of Otago, Wellington, NZ. (Prof Blakely directed this programme from 2010-19 and continues as a Co-Director.)
• The Dietary Interventions: Evidence & Translation (DIET) Programme at the University of Auckland, NZ.
• The Institute of health Metrics and Evaluation (home of the Global Burden of Disease Study), University of Washington - with whom PI is collaborating with building the next-generation VIVARIUM simulation model.

Funding

The Population Interventions Unit receives strategic funding by the University of Melbourne, and funding through its projects from:

• The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (league tables)
• The Health Research Council of New Zealand (health star rating [HSR] and tobacco projects).
• National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)
• Philanthropy