Theresa Smith

Age-period-cohort models for cancer incidence and mortality

Age-period-cohort models have been used to examine and forecast cancer incidence and mortality for over three decades. However, the fitting and interpretation of these models requires great care because of the well-known identifiability problem that exists; given any two of age, period, and cohort, the third is determined. In this talk I introduce APC models and the identifiability problem. I examine proposed ‘’solutions’’ to this problem and approaches based on an identifiable parametrization. I conclude with an analysis of cancer incidence data from Washington State and a discussion of future research directions.​