New research project on financial hardship due to health spending in Kansai
Little is known about the financial difficulties older people may face in paying for healthcare or their decisions to forego care that they need.
The WHO Kobe Centre (WKC) has initiated a new project to explore financial hardship due to catastrophic or impoverishing spending on healthcare and financial barriers to accessing healthcare, and the extent to which financial difficulties are a problem for the growing number of older people in the Kansai region of Japan.
Led by the Tokyo Metropolitan Geriatric Hospital and Institute of Gerontology, this two-year project will involve Kansai-based researchers from Konan University in Kobe and Osaka University in Osaka, as well as researchers at the National Center for Global Health and Medicine Japan and Keio University in Tokyo. The research team will summarize recent evidence from the literature about financial protection policies, financial hardship, and unmet care needs affecting older people in Japan. In addition, the team will conduct secondary analysis of existing national household surveys, such as the Japan Household Panel Survey. The study is expected to produce statistical estimates of financial hardship and unmet care needs comparing older people in Kansai to their counterparts in other regions of Japan and to people in other age groups.
It is the first of two studies focusing on the Kansai region that WKC will be supporting to provide evidence for better financial protection policies to help older people receive the care they need without experiencing financial hardship. This work could be helpful to other regions and countries for making progress towards universal health coverage that addresses the health needs of older people. The project will also contribute to the 2021 Global Monitoring Report on Financial Protection in Health to be jointly published by WHO and the World Bank.
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