Improving on quality adjusted life years measurements for health outcomes

Article Outline

• Copyright

The general academic pediatrician has become familiar with quality adjusted life years as a measure of health outcomes and data points in the equations of cost-effectiveness. We now need to get up to speed on more complex cost-utility analysis measures, especially so that healthcare reform will be informed and children's cost-utility tools will not be smaller versions of adult measures. In this issue of The Journal, Carroll and Downs provide a robust assessment of utility values for a variety of pediatric health outcomes based on parental preferences. Researchers and policy makers now will have this resource of citizen preferences for children, which can be shared and compared.

In the accompanying editor, Prosser brings into focus the limitations of currently available approaches for valuing child health, potential issues of using parents as proxy respondents to these questions, and how the results of Carroll and Downs' study should and should not be used.

Article page 21 ▸

Editorial page 7 ▸