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Improving Drug Safety — A Joint Responsibility pp 89–97Cite as

Quality of Life and Health Status: Innovative Outcome Variables for Research in Population Health

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Part of the book series: Health Systems Research ((HEALTH))

Abstract

Quality of life and health status have acquired increasing importance as outcome variables in research, public health, and practice, where the ultimate latent objectives are to improve the lot of the sick and to protect the good fortune of those who are well. How well we do in those parallel objectives can no longer be assessed merely by measuring length of survival in patients or mortality rates in populations. This is not a new idea, since we have been aware of such imperatives for at least 15 years. During this time, clinical investigators, epidemiologists, social scientists, and statisticians have been developing measures of the attributes we term quality of life or quality of survival among patients. We have also invested much intellectual effort in quantifying the somewhat different concept of health status in population.

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Authors
  1. W. O. Spitzer
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. HealthEcon Ltd., Steinentorstr. 19, CH-4051, Basel, Switzerland

    Rolf Dinkel

  2. Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Pulic Health, Rorschacher Strasse 103c, CH-9007, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Bruno Horisberger

  3. The University of Texas at Austin, Main Building 201, Austin, Texas, 78702, USA

    Kenneth W. Tolo

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© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Spitzer, W.O. (1991). Quality of Life and Health Status: Innovative Outcome Variables for Research in Population Health. In: Dinkel, R., Horisberger, B., Tolo, K.W. (eds) Improving Drug Safety — A Joint Responsibility. Health Systems Research. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-61250-3_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-61250-3_15

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-64762-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-61250-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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