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The Crucible

The Crucible

Exploring international drivers to population risks. The Crucible provides unique perspectives on how population risks will develop globally in the future, blending research and insights across four domains.

The four domains, and the drivers of future risk within each

Squares are papers, coloured by verdict: new confirms refines contradicts

Healthcare today

Healthcare across the world faces existential challenges: escalating demands against constrained resources, increasing co-morbidities and crises in public health.

Drivers

  • established strengthening
    Environment: air, heat, cold

    How air pollution, heat and cold affect how long people live, how the attribution is made, and how the balance is changing.

    7 papers
  • building mixed
    Cancer

    Which cancers are rising and which falling, what screening and new tests find earlier, what treatment has done to survival.

    18 papers
  • building strengthening
    Obesity, diabetes and the GLP-1 drugs

    Are obesity and diabetes still rising, understanding behavioural change and public policy, what difference do GLP-1 and friends make.

    11 papers
  • established steady
    Infectious disease and pandemics

    Infectious disease and pandemics: understanding both the risks and how well prepared we are

    10 papers
  • established strengthening
    Inequalities in health and length of life

    Whether inequalities in health and length of life are widening, where, and what is happening to health at working ages.

    8 papers
  • building mixed
    Frailty and multimorbidity at the oldest ages

    Whether the years added after 85 are healthy ones, how frailty and multiple conditions are measured, and where the limits of the data lie.

    2 papers
  • contested mixed
    Dementia

    Whether dementia is becoming more or less common, what is found earlier and why that clouds the count, what treatment and prevention now do, and what the deaths say.

    5 papers
  • building mixed
    Cardiovascular disease

    Whether deaths from heart disease and stroke have stopped falling, what is found earlier, what treatment and prevention now do, and what the deaths say.

    10 papers
  • emerging strengthening
    Capacity, funding and care

    What waiting lists, workforce shortage and the slowing growth of health and care spending cost in lives & how societies are paying for and providing care for older people.

    2 papers

Everything in Healthcare today

Behavioural science

Behavioural biases affect our every step and decision. The question is whether the right nudges can promote healthy behaviours effectively and efficiently.

Drivers

  • established mixed
    Social connection

    How isolation and loneliness shorten lives, proving the causal relationship and what can be done.

    5 papers
  • established mixed
    Smoking and vaping

    How far smoking has fallen and how many deaths it still causes, what vaping is doing to the people who take it up, and what generational bans will show.

    3 papers
  • established mixed
    Diet and physical activity

    What people eat and how much they move, what the measured evidence says each does to how long they live, and what has been shown to change either.

    2 papers
  • building strengthening
    What changes behaviour at scale

    What moves a population's behaviour — price, defaults, availability, incentives, information — and what the evidence on vaccination, screening and adherence says about which of them work.

    8 papers
  • established mixed
    Alcohol, drugs and suicide

    What is happening to deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide, whether they move together, and how much of it is behaviour and how much circumstance.

    2 papers

Everything in Behavioural science

Power of data

New partnerships over data will drive transparency and enable individuals to unlock value and insights for better medical and financial health.

Drivers

Everything in Power of data

Emergent technology

Every aspect of our daily lives will be transformed by technology, from sensors and robotics to nanotechnology and machine learning.

Drivers

  • emerging mixed
    Medicine out of hospital

    What wearables, remote monitoring and care at home add to how health is measured and delivered, and whether it shows in outcomes.

    1 paper
  • building strengthening
    New medicines

    Which new drugs and vaccines could plausibly move how long people live, whether they reach the people who would benefit, and what the record says about medicines and life expectancy.

    3 papers
  • emerging strengthening
    Biotechnology against inherited risk and ageing

    What are the benefits of genomic risk prediction, what gene therapies can now do and at what cost, and whether anything yet slows ageing itself.

    3 papers
  • emerging strengthening
    AI in medicine

    Whether machine learning predicts, detects and decides better than the tools we have, and whether that has yet changed an outcome for a population.

    5 papers

Everything in Emergent technology