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October 20, 2017 | 24th Annual Conference of the International Society for Quality of Life Research (ISOQOL), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Because all surveys begin with the first item, at the core of advances in patient-reported outcome measurement are better single-item measures of the most frequently-measured health domains. For many outcomes monitoring and cost prediction purposes in the future, the shortest health survey forms will administer only the best single item for each domain. Also, because the first item determines what happens next in adaptive surveys, more efficient single-item measurement is crucial. At the 24th Annual ISOQOL Conference, Drs. Ware and Gandek summarized advances in understanding of the content that best represents health domains and the implications of better operational definitions for capturing the essence of each domain, focusing on the Physical Function, Vitality and Mental Health domains. Survey items were self-administered on the Internet to representative samples of U.S. adults (N=2,938), ages 18-94. Results for new General Quality of Life (QGEN®) 10-item form items were compared with SF-36 and PROMIS-29 items for the same domains and in terms of how well they predicted SF-36 physical and mental component summary measures, to identify the reasons for superior item performance. Multiple psychometric criteria and tests of convergent and discriminant validity were reported. They reported that the best single-item measures were not found within the Medical Outcomes Study SF-36 or PROMIS-29 multiple-item scales or global items from those projects. Significant improvements in QGEN single-item performance, in comparison with SF-36 and PROMIS-29 for the same […]

September 25th-27th, 2017 | Harvard School of Public Health,Boston, MA Dr. Ware will present his annual lecture entitled “New Techniques for Health Outcomes Measurement and Evaluation” at the Measurement, Design, and Analysis Methods for Health Outcomes Research course held from September 25-27 at the Harvard School of Public Health. The lecture will cover the 40-year evolution of survey content and noteworthy milestones in the history of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) as well as some of the most innovative and important recent conceptual and methodological advances.  The latter include new features of items shown to improve their performance over legacy items, standardized underlying metrics for the domains common to most legacy generic PROs, and a new generation of standardized disease-specific PROs that fill the gap between disease-specific symptoms that are not QOL and generic QOL measures that are not disease-specific.  In the afternoon workshop, entitled “The How and Why of Integrating Disease-Specific and Generic Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMS)”, Dr. Ware will discuss the use of QOL impact attributions to specific diseases to improve the validity and responsiveness of disease-specific measures, how improved measures can be integrated and compared in a profile that can be standardized across diseases, and the first norm-based scoring for disease-specific measures for the chronically-ill population.  Case studies from early adoptions of these advances in academic medical center applications and clinical trials will be discussed. 

December 2nd, 2013 | Bethesda, MD Dr. Ware presented the annual lecture "Quality of Life Update – 2013” for the "Introduction to the Principles and Practice of Clinical Research" course offered by the National Institutes of Health on December 3rd. This was Dr. Ware's 15th IPPCR lecture; it focused on the advantages of integrating disease-specific and generic patient reported outcome (PRO) measures while using norm-based scoring to interpret both types of PRO measures. Plans for forthcoming NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) network presentations are intended to create a "Virtual University" that will include the Clinical Center’s core clinical research curriculum. More information on the NIH course can be found here.

August 19th – 21st, 2013 | Boston, MA Dr. Ware presented his annual lecture entitled “New Techniques for Health Outcomes Measurement and Evaluation” at the Measurement, Design, and Analysis Methods for Health Outcomes Research course held August 19, 2013 to August 21, 2013 at the Harvard School of Public Health. The lecture covered noteworthy conceptual and methodological developments, advantages of standardization (in both content and underlying metrics), advances in psychometric methods and norm-based scoring (for both generic and disease-specific PROs), examples of improved electronic data capture and connectivity, and the future of more comprehensive and more practical PRO information systems in health care. Dr. Ware’s afternoon Harvard course workshops addressed “Integrating and Improving Generic and Disease-Specific Assessments.” Objectives included discussing how both the content and scoring of disease-specific QOL impact measures can be standardized, how to evaluate improvements in QOL impact survey efficiency, and how reduced respondent burden can be achieved without sacrificing reliability and validity. More information can be found here.

October 20th, 2016 | 23rd Annual Conference of the International Society for Quality of Life Research (ISOQOL), Copenhagen, Denmark Dr. Ware presented an address entitled “From Populations to Patients: Progress, Challenges and Solutions for Better Understanding Health Outcomes” in the opening plenary of the 23rd Annual ISOQOL Conference. He provided his perspectives on advances made in the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) measurement field over the past few decades, the major challenges in the field today, and potential conceptual, methodological and technical solutions for these challenges. Dr. Ware also participated in a session in which he and other senior researchers gave advice to new researchers on successful strategies for dealing with challenges in their research and career paths. In addition, he took part in a roundtable discussion on the pros and cons of disease-specific and generic HRQOL measures. JWRG’s Director of Research, Barbara Gandek, also gave a presentation entitled “Can the Accuracy of Generic Health Outcome Predictions Be Improved Using Individualized Disease-Specific QOL Impact Scales?” at the conference. This presentation compared the accuracy of alternative approaches to measuring total disease impact among heterogeneous populations with multiple chronic conditions. Advances in this area are particularly important for improving case-mix adjustment when generic HRQOL measures are used in observational studies. More information about the ISOQOL conference can be found here.