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.