Every Monday our authors provide a round-up of some of the most recently published peer reviewed articles from the field. We don’t cover everything, or even what’s most important – just a few papers that have interested the author. Visit our Resources page for links to more journals or follow the HealthEconBot. If you’d like to write one of our weekly journal round-ups, get in touch.
Is there an association between early weight status and utility-based health-related quality of life in young children? Quality of Life Research [PubMed] Published 10th July 2018
Childhood obesity is an issue which has risen to prominence in recent years. Concurrently, there has been an increased interest in measuring utility values in children for use in economic evaluation. In the obesity context, there are relatively few studies that have examined whether childhood weight status is associated with preference-based utility and, following, whether such measures are useful for the economic evaluation of childhood obesity interventions. This study sought to tackle this issue using the proxy version of the Health Utilities Index Mark 3 (HUI-3) and weight status data in 368 children aged five years. Associations between weight status and HUI-3 score were assessed using various regression techniques. No statistically significant differences were found between weight status and preference-based health-related quality of life (HRQL). This adds to several recent studies with similar findings which imply that young children may not experience any decrements in HRQL associated with weight status, or that the measures we have cannot capture these decrements. When considering trial-based economic evaluation of childhood obesity interventions, this highlights that we should not be solely relying on preference-based instruments.
Time is money: investigating the value of leisure time and unpaid work. Value in Health Published 14th July 2018
For those of us who work on trials, we almost always attempt to do some sort of ‘societal’ perspective incorporating benefits beyond health. When it comes to valuing leisure time and unpaid work there is a dearth of literature and numerous methodological challenges which has led to a bit of a scatter-gun approach to measuring and valuing (usually by ignoring) this time. The authors in the paper sought to value unpaid work (e.g. household chores and voluntary work) and leisure time (“non-productive” time to be spent on one’s likings, nb. this includes lunch breaks). They did this using online questionnaires which included contingent valuation exercises (WTP and WTA) in a sample of representative adults in the Netherlands. Regression techniques following best practice were used (two-part models with transformed data). Using WTA they found an additional hour of unpaid work and leisure time was valued at €16 Euros, whilst the WTP value was €9.50. These values fall into similar ranges to those used in other studies. There are many issues with stated preference studies, which the authors thoroughly acknowledge and address. These costs, so often omitted in economic evaluation, have the potential to be substantial and there remains a need to accurately value this time. Capturing and valuing these time costs remains an important issue, specifically, for those researchers working in countries where national guidelines for economic evaluation prefer a societal perspective.
The impact of depression on health-related quality of life and wellbeing: identifying important dimensions and assessing their inclusion in multi-attribute utility instruments. Quality of Life Research [PubMed] Published 13th July 2018
At the start of every trial, we ask “so what measures should we include?” In the UK, the EQ-5D is the default option, though this decision is not often straightforward. Mental health disorders have a huge burden of impact in terms of both costs (economic and healthcare) and health-related quality of life. How we currently measure the impact of such disorders in economic evaluation often receives scrutiny and there has been recent interest in broadening the evaluative space beyond health to include wellbeing, both subjective wellbeing (SWB) and capability wellbeing (CWB). This study sought to identify which dimensions of HRQL, SWB and CWB were most affected by depression (the most common mental health disorder) and to examine the sensitivity of existing multi-attribute utility instruments (MAUIs) to these dimensions. The study used data from the “Multi-Instrument Comparison” study – this includes lots of measures, including depression measures (Depression Anxiety Stress Scale, Kessler Psychological Distress Scale); SWB measures (Personal Wellbeing Index, Satisfaction with Life Scale, Integrated Household Survey); CWB (ICECAP-A); and multi-attribute utility instruments (15D, AQoL-4D, AQoL-8D, EQ-5D-5L, HUI-3, QWB-SA, and SF-6D). To identify dimensions that were important, the authors used the ‘Glass’s Delta effect size’ (the difference between the mean scores of healthy and self-reported groups divided by the standard deviation of the healthy group). To investigate the extent to which current MAUIs capture these dimensions, each MAUI was regressed on each dimension of HRQL, CWB and SWB. There were lots of interesting findings. Unsurprisingly, the most important dimensions were in the psychosocial dimensions of HRQL (e.g. the ‘coping’, ‘happiness’, and ‘self-worth’ dimensions of the AQoL-8D). Interestingly, the ICECAP-A proved to be the best measure for distinguishing between healthy individuals and those with depression. The SWB measures, on the other hand, were less impacted by depression. Of the MAUIs, the AQoL-8D was the most sensitive, whilst our beloved EQ-5D-5L and SF-6D were the least sensitive at distinguishing dimensions. There is a huge amount to unpack within this study, but it does raise interesting questions regarding measurement issues and the impact of broadening the evaluative space for decision makers. Finally, it’s worth noting that a new MAUI (ReQoL) for mental health has been recently developed – although further testing is needed, this is something to consider in future.
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