The American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon) is a professional organization dedicated to promoting excellence in health economics research in the U.S. The objective of the ASHEcon conferences is to provide a forum for presenting emerging ideas, empirical results and methodological advances in health economics research and for facilitating the development of the next generation of health economics scholars. More specifically, the goal is to facilitate a large community of health economists to present and discuss high quality papers representing new and innovative research in important areas of health economics. The ultimate outcomes include better research on critical health topics, including aging related topics;generation of new research ideas;development of opportunities for students, junior researchers, women and minorities;dissemination of cutting-edge ideas;and a better knowledge base for private and public policies. Plenary speakers, scientific sessions, papers, and posters will address the substantive area of aging through several topics. These include: quality of care;health insurance and health care reform;comparative effectiveness;Medicare (e.g., physician and hospital payment reforms, Medicare Advantage, and Part Ds);ethnic/racial and gender disparities in treatments and outcomes;retirement and health;VA services;health and health behaviors across the life-span;long-term care;preventive services for elderly;and diffusion of technology. Pre-conference sessions will explore topics such as new developments in econometric and other methods, and developments in government data availability. Beginning with the conference at University of Wisconsin in 2006 and then the Duke conference in 2008, ASHEcon's biennial conference has quickly become established as the premier health economics conference in the United States. NIA, through a conference grant, was instrumental in helping the 2008 conference include high quality sessions directly related to aging and a plenary speaker (Mark McClellan) who spoke on health care reform, aging, and policy related issues. Funding for the next three conferences and the intervening planning years will build on our strong record of accomplishment. Research presented at the ASHEcon conferences will help advance NIA's, and more generally, NIH's research agenda. Many of the health economists who will attend are grantees of NIA and, more broadly, NIH;others may become interested in these topics after hearing presentations and discussions. Further, NIA, NIH, and ASHEcon share many goals such as training and developing the careers of students and junior faculty including women and minorities. The third biennial ASHEcon conference will be held June 20-23, 2010, at Cornell University in Ithaca NY. The fourth conference will be at the University of Minnesota in 2012 and the fifth is to be held in 2014 at a university TBD. We anticipate about 700 participants at the third conference. The 2006 conference had 500 attendees and the 2008 conference had 650 attendees. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The objective of the biennial conferences of the American Society of Health Economists (ASHEcon) is to provide a forum for emerging ideas and empirical results of health economics research. Topics to be covered in the three proposed conferences include: quality of care;health insurance and health care reform;comparative effectiveness;Medicare (e.g., physician and hospital payment reforms, Medicare Advantage, and Part Ds);ethnic/racial and gender disparities in treatments and outcomes;retirement and health;VA services;health and health behaviors across the ages;long-term care, preventive services for elderly;and diffusion of technology, among others. The next three biennial ASHEcon conferences will be held June 2010 at Cornell University, summer 2012 at University of Minnesota, and summer 2014 at a university TBD.