We welcome you to a new year and a new edition of ReFlections, RGA’s global medical newsletter. As always, it has been a pleasure to see many of you at recent industry conferences and client events.
This edition starts off with a comprehensive review and update in the form of a case review on kidney transplant recipient morbidity and mortality. The article by Dr. Georgiana Pascutiu, Medical Director, RGA, and a nephrologist, highlights some of the relatively recent favorable changes in long-term outcomes for these individuals.
Hezhong (Mark) Ma, Vice President and Actuary, RGA, teams up with Dr. Kamran Khan, an infectious disease specialist in Toronto, Canada and a consultant to RGA, to present a comprehensive analysis and review of predictive factors to strengthen insurer assessment of seasonal influenza mortality variation. These variations can be quite significant and can impact insurers’ anticipated mortality experience. This article is interesting both from medical and actuarial perspectives, so please be sure to share it with your companies’ actuaries.
Focusing on health and living benefits insurance, Dr. Daniel Zimmerman, Vice President and Medical Director, RGA, provides a Brief Report on sepsis. There is growing awareness of this syndrome, both medically and in the general public, and it is now considered a medical emergency on par with stroke and heart attack. Insurance costs can be high and insurers need to understand the epidemiology of this critical, life-threatening condition.
This edition’s article about The Longer Life Foundation (LLF) launches our celebration of the 20th anniversary of LLF’s founding. Our interview with one of our veteran multiyear grant recipients, Dr. Luigi Fontana, co-director of the Longevity Research Program at Washington University in St. Louis, focuses on his innovative and world-leading research in the field of caloric restriction and metabolism. His insights and discoveries may someday materially impact our industry. We would like to thank everyone who participated in our readership survey which was conducted in the September edition of ReFlections. The results will help us serve you better and make ReFlections a more valuable resource for you. Please enjoy this edition of ReFlections! We wish all of you, our readers, health and wellness in the New Year.
In this Issue
