Anne Spencer

How far does screening women for domestic (partner) violence in different health-care settings meet criteria for a screening programme? Systematic reviews of nine UK National Screening Committee criteria

OBJECTIVES The two objectives were: (1) to identify, appraise and synthesise research that is relevant to selected UK National Screening Committee (NSC) criteria for a screening programme in relation to partner violence; and (2) to judge whether current evidence fulfils selected NSC criteria for the implementation of screening for partner violence in health-care settings. DATA SOURCES Fourteen electronic databases from their respective start dates to 31 December 2006. REVIEW METHODS The review examined seven questions linked to key NSC criteria: QI: What is the prevalence of partner violence against women and what are its health consequences? QII: Are screening tools valid and reliable? QIII: Is screening for partner violence acceptable to women? QIV: Are interventions effective once partner violence is disclosed in a health-care setting? QV: Can mortality or morbidity be reduced following screening? QVI: Is a partner violence screening programme acceptable to health professionals and the public? QVII: Is screening for partner violence cost-effective? Data were selected using different inclusion/exclusion criteria for the seven review questions. The quality of the primary studies was assessed using published appraisal tools. We grouped the findings of the surveys, diagnostic accuracy and intervention studies, and qualitatively analysed differences between outcomes in relation to study quality, setting, populations and, where applicable, the nature of the intervention. We systematically considered each of the selected NSC criteria against the review evidence. RESULTS The lifetime prevalence of partner violence against women in the general UK population ranged from 13% to 31%, and in clinical populations it was 13-35%. The 1-year prevalence ranged from 4.2% to 6% in the general population. This showed that partner violence against women is a major public health problem and potentially appropriate for screening and intervention. The HITS (Hurts, Insults, Threatens and Screams) scale was the best of several short screening tools for use in health-care settings. Most women patients considered screening acceptable (range 35-99%), although they identified potential harms. The evidence for effectiveness of advocacy is growing, and psychological interventions may be effective, but not necessarily for women identified through screening. No trials of screening programmes measured morbidity and mortality. The acceptability of partner violence screening among health-care professionals ranged from 15% to 95%, and the NSC criterion was not met. There were no cost-effectiveness studies, but a Markov model of a pilot intervention to increase identification of survivors of partner violence in general practice found that such an intervention was potentially cost-effective. CONCLUSIONS Currently there is insufficient evidence to implement a screening programme for partner violence against women either in health services generally or in specific clinical settings. Recommendations for further research include: trials of system-level interventions and of psychological and advocacy interventions; trials to test theoretically explicit interventions to help understand what works for whom, when and in what contexts; qualitative studies exploring what women want from interventions; cohort studies measuring risk factors, resilience factors and the lifetime trajectory of partner violence; and longitudinal studies measuring the long-term prognosis for survivors of partner violence.

On the Contingent Valuation of Safety and the Safety of Contingent Valuation: Part 1-Caveat Investigator

This article reports the results of two studies aimed at testing and refining a procedure for estimating willingness-to-pay based monetary values of safety using the contingent valuation method. In spite of the fact that respondents were given the opportunity to discuss various safety issues and key concepts in focus group meetings held in advance of individual interviews, and were also given ample opportunity to revise their responses in the light of the overall pattern of these responses, the results show clear evidence of extensive and persistent insensitivity to the scale and scope of the safety improvements that were specified in the contingent valuation questions, as well as vulnerability to framing effects. This clearly casts serious doubt on the reliability and validity of willingness-to-pay based monetary values of safety estimated using conventional contingent valuation procedures.

Marginal costs and benefits.

Decision makers are interested in measuring the costs and benefits of various interventions, and sometimes they are presented with the average costs and benefits of alternative interventions and asked to compare these. Usually a newer intervention is being compared with an existing one, and the most appropriate comparison is not of average costs (and benefits) but of the extra--or marginal--costs (and benefits) of the new intervention. Reanalysis of the cost effectiveness ratio of biochemical screening of all women for Downs syndrome compared with age based screening shows that the marginal cost effectiveness of biochemical screening is 47,786 pounds, compared with an average cost effectiveness of 37,591 pounds. It may sometimes be difficult or costly to calculate marginal costs and benefits, but this should be done whenever possible.

The Association Between Influenza Vaccine in Pregnancy and Adverse Neonatal Outcomes

OBJECTIVE To determine whether neonatal outcomes differ between women vaccinated during pregnancy and those not vaccinated. METHODS Self-reported history of receipt of influenza vaccination during pregnancy was collected from women at the time of admission for obstetrical delivery at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, beginning in April 2006. The cohort for this study included women who delivered a singleton infant prior to November 2009, reflecting the pre-pandemic H1N1 vaccination period. Neonatal outcomes were compared using logistic regression between vaccinated and non-vaccinated women. RESULTS Overall, 1957 of 9781 women (20%) included in the cohort received influenza vaccine during their pregnancy. The adjusted odds ratio and 95% confidence interval for a small for gestational age infant (lowest 10th percentile birth weight for gestational age and sex) was 0.80 (95% CI 0.65 to 0.95) for vaccinated women relative to non-vaccinated women. The adjusted odds ratio for a low birth weight infant was 0.74 (95% CI 0.58 to 0.95). Rates of preterm birth and a composite indicator of adverse neonatal outcomes were lower among vaccinated women, but were not statistically significant. The effects of maternal vaccination on neonatal outcomes did not differ between high- and low-risk women. CONCLUSION As evidence continues to mount in support of improved neonatal outcomes associated with receiving influenza vaccination during pregnancy, enhanced public health measures are necessary to encourage pregnant women to receive the influenza vaccine.

A test of the QALY model when health varies over time

Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) estimate the utility derived from health profiles by taking account of life expectancy and quality of life. In applying QALYs to situations where health varies over time, it is usual to assume that we can add the utilities from constituent health states. This paper investigates the QALY approach to combining health states over time using two tests. The first test rejects additive independence, the central assumption of the QALY model, for individual respondents. The second test is equivocal. The tests are, therefore, unable to conclusively reject the QALY approach to combining health states over time.

Allocating resources in health care: alternative approaches to measuring needs in resource allocation formula in Ontario.

Maintaining or improving the welfare of the population is a complex issue involving individual and collective actions and institutions. Despite questions regarding the relevance of health care systems to these aims, they remain vital policy and treatment arenas with respect to curative and preventative regimes. As a component of social welfare, health care resources should be distributed equitably, according to need for health care. This paper evaluates alternative indicators of health status within Ontario against self-reported health as a means of allocating health care resources. Proxies of need for health care include standardized mortality ratios (based on the population aged 0-64) and a socioeconomic based indicator. Mortality indicators are found to be more closely correlated with self-reported health status than the socioeconomic indicator, suggesting that mortality is better able to reflect variations in health status and health care needs.

Cost-effectiveness of Identification and Referral to Improve Safety (IRIS), a domestic violence training and support programme for primary care: a modelling study based on a randomised controlled trial

Objective The Identification and Referral to Improve Safety (IRIS) cluster randomised controlled trial tested the effectiveness of a training and support intervention to improve the response of primary care to women experiencing domestic violence (DV). The aim of this study is to estimate the cost-effectiveness of this intervention. Design Markov model-based cost-effectiveness analysis. Setting General practices in two urban areas in the UK. Participants Simulated female individuals from the general UK population who were registered at general practices, aged 16 years and older. Intervention General practices received staff training, prompts to ask women about DV embedded in the electronic medical record, a care pathway including referral to a specialist DV agency and continuing contact from that agency. The trial compared the rate of referrals of women with specialist DV agencies from 24 general practices that received the IRIS programme with 24 general practices not receiving the programme. The trial did not measure outcomes for women beyond the intermediate outcome of referral to specialist agencies. The Markov model extrapolated the trial results to estimate the long-term healthcare and societal costs and benefits using data from other trials and epidemiological studies. Results The intervention would produce societal cost savings per woman registered in the general practice of UK£37 (95% CI £178 saved to a cost of £136) over 1 year. The incremental quality-adjusted life-year was estimated to be 0.0010 (95% CI −0.0157 to 0.0101) per woman. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis found 78% of model replications under a willingness to pay threshold of £20 000 per quality-adjusted life-year. Conclusions The IRIS programme is likely to be cost-effective and possibly cost saving from a societal perspective. Better data on the trajectory of abuse and the effect of advocacy are needed for a more robust model. Trial registration Current Controlled Trials, ISRCTN74012786.

Cost–effectiveness of advising the use of topical or oral ibuprofen for knee pain; the TOIB study [ISRCTN: 79353052]

OBJECTIVE Advice to use topical or oral NSAIDs is equally effective for the treatment of knee pain in older people. The ingredient cost of topical preparations is typically more than oral preparations, but could save costs because they have fewer adverse effects. A cost-utility study is needed to decide on their comparative cost effectiveness. METHODS We recruited 585 people aged >or=50 yrs with knee pain; 282 participated in a randomized controlled trial and 303 in a patient preference study from 26 MRC General Practice Research Framework practices in the UK. They received advice to preferentially use topical or oral NSAIDs for knee pain. We calculated the comparative cost per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) from both a National Health Service (NHS) and a societal perspective over 12 and 24 months. RESULTS Compared with the topical route, oral NSAIDs cost the NHS pound191 and pound72 more over 1 yr in the randomized trial and preference study, respectively. The cost per QALY, from an NHS perspective, was in the range of pound9000- pound12000 in the randomized trial. In the preference study, it was pound2564 over 1 yr, but over 2 yrs the oral route was dominant. CONCLUSIONS Our cost-effectiveness analysis supports the use of oral NSAIDs in selected patients. Nevertheless, deciding to recommend oral NSAIDs in preference to topical NSAIDs could have a substantial impact on NHS costs because of the uncertainty in the cost-effectiveness estimate.

The agreement between proxy and self-completed EQ-5D for care home residents was better for index scores than individual domains *

Objective Proxy measures are an alternative source of data for care home residents who are unable to complete the health utility measure, but the agreement levels between residents and care home staff for the EQ-5D have not been investigated previously. The objective of the present study was to examine the inter-rater agreement levels for the reporting of EQ-5D by care home residents and staff, adjusting for the impact of clustering. Study Design and Setting The data consist of EQ-5D scores for 565 pairs of care home residents and proxies and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) for 248 pairs. Cluster-adjusted agreement was compared for the domains, index scores, and QALYs from the EQ-5D. Factors influencing index score agreement are also described. Results The results show poor to fair agreement at the domain level (cluster-adjusted Kappa −0.03 to 0.26) and moderate agreement at the score level (cluster-adjusted intra-class correlation coefficient [ICC] 0.44–0.50) and for QALYs (cluster-adjusted ICC 0.59). A higher likelihood of depression and lower cognitive impairment were both associated with smaller discrepancy between proxy and self-completed scores. Conclusion Proxies appear to be an acceptable source of data for index scores and QALYs but may be less reliable if individual domains are considered.

Estimating a Preference-Based Index for an Eight-Dimensional Health State Classification System for Multiple Sclerosis

BACKGROUND Condition-specific measures are frequently used to assess the health-related quality of life of people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Such measures are unsuitable for use in economic evaluations that require estimates of cost per quality-adjusted life-year because they are not based on preferences. OBJECTIVES To report the estimation of a preference-based single index for an eight-dimensional instrument for MS, the Multiple Sclerosis Impact Scale - Eight Dimensions (MSIS-8D), derived from an MS-specific measure of health-related quality of life, the 29-item Multiple Sclerosis Impact Scale (MSIS-29). METHODS We elicited preferences for a sample of MSIS-8D states (n = 169) from a sample (n = 1702) of the UK general population. Preferences were elicited using the time trade-off technique via an Internet-based survey. We fitted regression models to these data to estimate values for all health states described by the MSIS-8D. Estimated values were assessed against MSIS-29 scores and values derived from generic preference-based measures in a large, representative sample of people with MS. RESULTS Participants reported that the time trade-off questions were easy to understand. Observed health state values ranged from 0.08 to 0.89. The best-performing model was a main effects, random effects model (mean absolute error = 0.04). Validation analyses support the performance of the MSIS-8D index: it correlated more strongly than did generic measures with MSIS-29 scores, and it discriminated effectively between subgroups of people with MS. CONCLUSIONS The MSIS-8D enables health state values to be estimated from the MSIS-29, adding to the methods available to assess health outcomes and to estimate quality-adjusted life-years for MS for use in health technology assessment and decision-making contexts.