ABSTRACT
Most life history processes have costs or benefits associated with them. The pain or functional impairment arising from chronic disease may affect an individual's ability to carry out activities of daily living and their ability to maintain employment. Processes related to education and employment have costs for education or training and benefits from employment. In some settings, decisions concerning interventions for individuals can be guided by estimation of life history paths expected under alternative actions. This chapter describes some basic settings and analysis based on multistate models and reviews the therapeutic breast cancer trial. Multistate models are often used to assess aggregate public health costs associated with chronic conditions and multistate models are often used for prediction. One approach is through individual-level models combined with information about the age structure of a population. The chapter also presents a model that is useful when tracking viral load measurements in HIV-positive individuals, and in examining the occurrence of viral rebounds.
