IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/hepoli/v89y2009i3p303-311.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Estimation of avoidable skin cancers and cost-savings to government associated with regulation of the solarium industry in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Hirst, Nicholas
  • Gordon, Louisa
  • Gies, Peter
  • Green, Adle C.

Abstract

Objective In Australia there is growing concern about the expanding solarium industry, and the additive effect of persons seeking exposure to artificial ultraviolet radiation (UVR) against already intense background levels of solar UVR. We estimated the numbers of potential skin cancers prevented through regulation of solaria and the associated cost-savings to the Federal Government.Methods A lifetime decision-analytic model was created using relative risk estimates based on a meta-analysis of the literature assessing the link between skin cancer risk and solarium use. The costs were limited to those incurred by Medicare Australia, for the medical care of individuals treated for skin cancer.Results With stricter regulations, we estimated between 18 and 31 melanomas, 200-251 squamous cell carcinomas and associated costs of $AU 256,054 would be avoided per 100,000 persons. Our base findings were sensitive to estimates for prevalence of use, skin cancer risk and discounting rates.Conclusions Continued growth in the Australian solarium industry is likely to inflate the already substantial skin cancer burden. Subject to some limitations, our study indicates that by successfully enforcing solarium regulations to prohibit use by minors and by those with fair skin colour, the Federal Government could expect favourable cost and health benefits.

Suggested Citation

  • Hirst, Nicholas & Gordon, Louisa & Gies, Peter & Green, Adle C., 2009. "Estimation of avoidable skin cancers and cost-savings to government associated with regulation of the solarium industry in Australia," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 89(3), pages 303-311, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:89:y:2009:i:3:p:303-311
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168-8510(08)00162-0
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gordon, Louisa G. & Sinclair, Craig & Cleaves, Noel & Makin, Jennifer K. & Rodriguez-Acevedo, Astrid J. & Green, Adèle C., 2020. "Consequences of banning commercial solaria in 2016 in Australia," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 124(6), pages 665-670.
    2. Eibich, Peter & Ziebarth, Nicolas R., 2014. "Analyzing regional variation in health care utilization using (rich) household microdata," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(1), pages 41-53.
    3. Daniela Haluza & Stana Simic & Hanns Moshammer, 2016. "Sunbed Use Prevalence and Associated Skin Health Habits: Results of a Representative, Population-Based Survey among Austrian Residents," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-13, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:89:y:2009:i:3:p:303-311. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu or the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/healthpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.