Measuring and Valuing Health for Children and Adolescents

Healthcare treatments and vaccinations can be expensive, but healthcare systems have limited budgets. The allocation of these budgets requires us to measure health and put a value on how good or bad different states of health are. There are accepted methods for measuring and valuing adult health, but this is not the case for children and adolescents. Neither is it the case that methods used for adults can be uncritically applied to younger people. Instead, this talk will explore why it is necessary to think differently when measuring and valuing health for children; what conceptual, methodological, and normative issues the process raises; and what the potential solutions are. This is the subject of ongoing research being conducted in ScHARR and elsewhere globally. Questions for researchers include who should report how a child is feeling? What aspects of child health are important? Who should decide which aspects of child health are most important? What methods should be used to put a value on child and adolescent health? In this talk we will address these questions and more as we review the current state-of-the-art thinking into the measurement and valuation of child health.

Bios

Philip Powell

Philip Powell is a Research Fellow in the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), University of Sheffield and part of the ScHARR Outcomes team (https://scharr.dept.shef.ac.uk/outcomes/). He has a research background in Psychology, but has worked in the field of economics (and health economics) for over 7 years, now specialising in outcomes research. Philip uses mixed methods in his research and has interest and expertise in the development of new measures for assessing quality of life in specific health conditions, including in children and rare diseases. He also conducts methodological research in the measurement and valuation of health and quality of life, with recent projects exploring the normative, methodological, and practical aspects of how health states are valued for children and adolescents.

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/scharr/people/staff/philip-powell

https://twitter.com/philapowell

Donna Rowen

Donna Rowen is a Senior Research Fellow in ScHARR, University of Sheffield and part of the ScHARR Outcomes team (https://scharr.dept.shef.ac.uk/outcomes/). Donna is a member of the Department of Health and Social Care Policy Research Unit in the Economic Methods of Evaluation of Health and Care Interventions, and has been involved in methods research for the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Decision Support Unit. Donna’s main research interests lie in measuring and valuing health, in particular valuing health across different populations and conditions, using different modes of administration (for example online or face-to-face), elicitation techniques and analyses. Donna has led recent projects in valuing health for children in the Netherlands and examining the performance of different child and adolescent health instruments.

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/scharr/people/staff/donna-rowen