Self-Reported Population Health: An International Perspective based on EQ-5D

Abstract

The EuroQol Group• The EuroQol Group is a network of international multidisciplinary researchers devoted to the measurement of health status.Established in 1987, the EuroQol Group originally consisted of researchers from Europe, but nowadays includes members from North and South America, Asia, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.The Group is responsible for the development of EQ-5D, a preferencebased measure of health status that is now widely used in clinical trials, observational studies, and other health surveys.The EuroQol Group has been holding annual scientific meetings since its inception in 1987.• The EuroQol Group can be justifiably proud of its collective scientific achievements over the last 20 years.Research areas include valuation, EQ-5D use in clinical studies and in population surveys, experimentation with the EQ-5D descriptive system, computerized applications, interpretation of EQ-5D ratings, and the role of EQ-5D in measuring social inequalities in self-reported health.• The EuroQol Group's website (www.euroqol.org)contains detailed information about EQ-5D, guidance for users, a list of available language versions, EQ-5D references, and contact details.• EQ-5D is a standardized measure of health status developed by the EuroQol Group in order to provide a simple, generic measure of health for clinical and economic appraisal.Applicable to a wide range of health conditions and treatments, it provides a simple descriptive profile and a single index value for health status that can be used in the clinical and economic evaluation of health care as well as in population health surveys.