Online Program

Panel Discussion

After major successes in the 20th century—increased life expectancy and decreased infant mortality and infectious disease burden—public health faces new challenges. Chief among these is reducing the incidence of chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and cancer. Although these diseases increase mortality, much of their burden and cost is from reduced current physical and mental health. To fully assess and monitor their lifetime burden, we need to improve their tracking and surveillance to capture their fatal and nonfatal health burden. Doing this effectively and optimally requires using consistent surveillance measures, comparable across health conditions, time, population subgroups, and geographic regions, from local areas to countries. A widely accepted measure of burden of disease for non-fatal outcomes is health-related quality of life (HRQOL), a multidimensional concept that usually includes subjective evaluations of both positive and negative aspects of life that affects both physical and mental health. HRQOL measures are used in various settings with different instruments. Many instruments are disease-specific, but others are generic scales (e.g., CDC Healthy Days, SF-12/SF-36) and are more suitable for public health surveillance because of their breadth and facilitation of comparisons across conditions. In this session, we will present a series of studies that highlight the potential benefits of using HRQOL measures for both population health surveillance as well as assessment tools for evaluating the impact of specific interventions designed to improve HRQOL.

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH) , Masters Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES)