Announcement
"Judith D. Kasper, Johns Hopkins public health researcher who co-conducted acclaimed study on aging, dies" - Baltimore Sun. 08/11/2021
Judith D. Kasper of the Hopkins’ Economics of Alzheimer’s Disease & Services Center (HEADS), died on August 4th, 2021. She was a highly regarded Johns Hopkins public health researcher who co-conducted one of the most significant studies on aging “ever conducted in the U.S. and in the world,” according to a colleague. “What a great loss for her family, to the field, and a dear friend and colleague.” She died of a heart attack in her longtime Bolton Hill home. She was 72.
Dr. Kasper’s research and teaching interests included health policy in disability and long-term care; assessment of needs for care and service provision to physically and mentally disabled people; health care financing and access for vulnerable populations; and the development and application of data sources — national surveys in particular — for health policy analysis and health services research. She was Principal Investigator of the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS) funded by the National Institute on Aging to support research on disability trends and dynamics among older people. Dr. Kasper received her PhD from the University of Chicago.
“Judith realized that the science of disability with aging and caregiving patterns had made progress but a national view of this enormous occurrence was missing,” wrote Dr. Luigi Ferrucci of the NIA. “Thus, she designed a representative study for the National Health and Aging Trends Study in collaboration with her colleague Vicki A. Freedman. The study is revolutionary in many ways, for the representativeness of the sample, the sample size, the solid conceptualization of disability, the data sharing policy, the solid implementation also used a good advisory committee. I was privileged to be one of the advisers, although Judith and Vicki had very clear and innovative idea of what needed to be done.”