Valuing Child Maltreatment Outcomes for Use in Economic Evaluations

Phaedra S. Corso, PhD, MPA
Small Project PI
Who: Adult survivors of child maltreatment (CM), as defined by physical and/or emotional abuse.
 
What: 5-10 focus groups will be conducted with CM survivors, ages 18 years and older. Focus group moderators will facilitate discussions on dimensions of health impacted by CM at different age periods, ages 5-11 and ages 12-17. Thematic analysis of focus group sessions will be conducted to determine the appropriate domains of health to be used in developing CM vignettes for use in future national surveys to elicit preferences for CM outcomes.
 
Where: Athens and Atlanta, Georgia
 
Why: While there is increasing evidence of effective interventions to prevent CM, there is still a question of whether these interventions represent a good value for the resources expended. Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA), which compares an intervention’s costs to its outcomes, is one analytic tool to answer this question. The outcome measure typically used in a CEA is a composite measure of health that includes life expectancy and health-related quality of life (HRQoL), combined together in a quality-adjusted life year (QALY). While outcome measures for use in economic evaluations are readily available in the literature for many acute and chronic conditions, the field of CM is woefully behind in valuing outcomes for use in economic evaluations and for conducting economic evaluations of CM interventions in general.
 
Impact: The overall aims of this project are to develop appropriate descriptions of CM outcomes in terms of identifying relevant dimensions of health-related quality of life (HRQoL); and to test the descriptive validity of available instruments to measure preference-based HRQoL in children and adolescents who are victims of violence, for use in future CEAs of interventions to prevent child maltreatment.
 
Return on Investment: This data will be combined with complementary work being conducted by RTI, International, to develop a national survey instrument that will assess preferences for health states defined by CM.