Basic Probabilistic Model for Assessing Occupational Health Risks for Workers ' Health And Economic Assessment of the Effectiveness of Measures for their Prevention in Terms of Diseases of Circulatory System and their Fatal Complications

This study is a part of a project conducted by International Centre for Health Economics, Management, and Policy at Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg in response to Gazprom Neft’s request. In accordance with the company’s request, a custom software application was prepared. The application is able to assess individual health risks of workers based on their risk factors commonly associated with heart attacks and strokes. It also performs an economic assessment of preventive measures implemented to reduce those health risks. To create the prototype application, several steps were completed. We reviewed literature on risk factors and utilized the publications to aggregate previously found estimates of risk factors’ effects on one’s probability of experiencing a heart attack and a stroke. Most common risk factors (obesity, diabetes, hypertension, smoking, alcohol abuse and depression) were selected and used in regression analysis to produce our own estimates of their effects with representative on Russian population data. Produced estimates were used to predict individual risks of aforementioned diseases for a randomly generated group of employees. After reviewing literature on workplace interventions aimed at reducing risks of heart attacks and strokes, a model for cost-benefit analysis was developed. The model uses employers’ direct and indirect costs associated with three heart attack- and stroke-related employee outcomes (termination of work, restrictions at workplace and temporary absence from work) and intervention implementation to calculate how profitable an intervention would be for a company. The model was successfully tested with demonstrational input data.