About the Roybal Center

The goal of the Roybal Center for Health Policy Simulation is to develop better models to understand the consequences of biomedical developments and social forces for health, health spending, and health care delivery. The Center is one of ten established by the National Institute on Aging to move promising social and behavioral research findings out of the laboratory and into programs, practices, and policies that will improve the lives of older people and the capacity of society to adapt to societal aging. The Roybal Center for Health Policy Simulation has several specific aims:

1. Create a Center that researches new methods for forecasting disease, functional status, and health expenditures of older populations, and that develops decision-making tools based on these methods;
2. Assess how new and existing medical interventions affect the health, functional status, and spending of older cohorts, and their implications for Medicare and Medicaid and society-at-large;
3. Assess how demographic and public health trends-including obesity, diabetes, and smoking-affect future outcomes for the elderly and society-at-large.