Healthcare Experts Introduce New Means to Measure Health-Related Quality of Life

Newswise — Lawrenceville, NJ, USA—April 5, 2022—Value in Health, the official journal of ISPOR—The Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research, announced today the publication of a series of articles reporting the international development of a new health-related quality of life instrument, the EQ-HWB. The series was published in the April 2022 issue of Value in Health. 

The research covers key issues in the EQ-HWB development process, provides early signs regarding how the EQ-HWB compares to other instruments such as the EQ-5D-5L, and gives a useful framework to establish face validity in non-English speaking settings. 

“The ‘Extending the QALY’ project, which has inspired this body of work, began as a UK initiative driven by the need for an outcome measure for use in social and community care,” said guest editors Richard Norman, PhD, Curtin University, Perth, Australia, and Jan Abel Olsen, PhD, University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway. “The aim of the ‘Extending the QALY’ project was to develop a new broader generic measure of health and wellbeing for use in economic evaluation across health, social care, and public health based on the views of users and beneficiaries of these services, including informal carers.”

The introductory editorial, “Expanding the Scope of Value for Economic Evaluation: The EQ-HWB Instrument,” shares some of the editors’ reflections on potential improvements in the EQ-HWB descriptive system and other considerations that should be addressed if the instrument is to have broad uptake in policy, and introduces the 6 articles in the series:

1. “The EQ-HWB: Overview of the Development of a Measure of Health and Wellbeing and Key Results,” by John Brazier, Tessa Peasgood, Clara Mukuria, et al
2. “Qualitative Review on Domains of Quality of Life Important for Patients, Social Care Users and Informal Carers to Inform the Development of the EQ-HWB,” by Clara Mukuria, Janice Connell, Jill Carlton, et al
3. “Generation, Selection, and Face Validation of Items for a New Generic Measure of Quality of Life: The EQ-HWB,” by Jill Carlton, Tessa Peasgood, Clara Mukuria, et al
4. “Developing a New Generic Health and Wellbeing Measure: Psychometric Survey Results for the EQ-HWB,” by Tessa Peasgood, Clara Mukuria, John Brazier, et al
5. “A Comparison of a Preliminary Version of the EQ-HWB Short and the 5-Level Version of EQ-5D,” by Andrea L. Monteiro, Maja Kuharic, and A. Simon Pickard
6. “The Development of a New International Generic Measure (EQ-HWB): Face Validity and Psychometric Stages in Argentina,” by Federico Augustovski, Fernando Argento, Rocío Rodríguez, Luz Gibbons, Clara Mukuria, and Maria Belizán

“We would like to congratulate the author teams on assembling an important body of work and look forward to seeing the next stages of this research,” said Drs Norman and Olsen. “We believe that the challenging valuation stage, whereby preferences are to be elicited over several extensively described health state combinations, is likely to feed back some important lessons on where to further refine and simplify the descriptive system.”

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ABOUT ISPOR
ISPOR, the professional society for health economics and outcomes research (HEOR), is an international, multistakeholder, nonprofit dedicated to advancing HEOR excellence to improve decision making for health globally. The Society is the leading source for scientific conferences, peer-reviewed and MEDLINE^®-indexed publications, good practices guidance, education, collaboration, and tools/resources in the field.
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ABOUT VALUE IN HEALTH
Value in Health (ISSN 1098-3015) is an international, indexed journal that publishes original research and health policy articles that advance the field of health economics and outcomes research to help healthcare leaders make evidence-based decisions. The journal’s 2020 impact factor score is 5.725 and its 5-year impact factor score is 6.932. Value in Health is ranked 4th of 98 journals in health policy and services, 9th of 108 journals in healthcare sciences and services, and 24th of 376 journals in economics. Value in Health is a monthly publication that circulates to more than 10,000 readers around the world.
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