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Cassandra Simmons

World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe


Cassandra Simmons

Currently working as a Technical Advisor (Consultant) for long-term care with the WHO Regional Office for Europe. The drive behind my work has been to contribute through research and policy to the sustainable and equitable design of health and care systems, to reducing barriers to care, and to raising awareness of challenges faced by people with care needs and their families. Having completed my masters in economics at the University of Toronto, my work experience has comprised comparative quantitative research and policy across a breadth of LTC topics. Prior to my current role, I worked as a Health Policy Researcher at the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy & Research, where my research focused on use and financing of LTC, quality of care, informal caregiving, unmet needs for LTC and the care workforce.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Countries Austria;
Topics Care inequalities; Care work and migration; Economics of LTC; Financing LTC; Gender and care; LTC Policy; LTC Workforce; Quality and accreditation for LTC services; Unpaid / informal care;
Methods Comparative policy analysis; Literature reviews and synthesis; Policy analysis; Quantitative data analysis; Surveys;
Role Research;
Interest Groups Economics of Long-Term Care; Employment Education and Family carers; Quasi-experimental methods;
GOOGLE SCHOLARhttps://scholar.google.com/citations?user=IPM0_jAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/cassandra-simmons
Other 1https://www.euro.centre.org/persons/detail/3551;
Research interests

My fields of interest include the design of health and long-term care (LTC) systems, with a particular focus on the financing of these systems, working conditions of the care workforce, quality of care provided, inequalities in health and care, and informal caregiving.

Key publications

Simmons, C., Pot, M., Lorenz-Dant, K., & Leichsenring, K. (2024). Disentangling the impact of alternative payment models and associated service delivery models on quality of chronic care: A scoping review. Health policy (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 143, 105034. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2024.105034

Simmons, C., Szenkurök, V., & Rodrigues, R. (2024). Care regimes in Europe: a dynamic view of typologies and evolving long-term care policies over time. In Handbook on the Political Economy of Social Policy (pp. 205-217). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Rodrigues, R., Rehnberg, J., Simmons, C., Ilinca, S., Zólyomi, E., Vafaei, A., Kadi, S., Jull, J., Phillips, S., & Fors, S. (2023). Cohort trajectories by age and gender for informal caregiving in Europe adjusted for socio-demographic changes, 2004 and 2015. The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences, gbad011.

Rodrigues, R., Simmons, C., Premrov, T., Böhler, C. & Leichsenring, K. (2022). From each according to means, to each according to needs? Distributional effects of abolishing asset-based payments for residential care in Austria. International Journal for Equity in Health 21, 39.

Simmons, C., Rodrigues, R., & Szebehely, M. (2021). Working conditions in the long-term care sector: A comparative study of migrant and native workers in Austria and Sweden. Health & Social Care in the Community, 00, 1-12.

Rodrigues, R., Simmons, C., Schmidt, A.E., & Steiber, N. (2021). Care in times of COVID-19: The impact of the pandemic on informal caregiving in Austria. European Journal of Aging 18, 195-205.