Asthma Impacts Productivity At Work And In School

Main Category: Respiratory / Asthma
Article Date: 26 Jul 2007 - 1:00 PDT

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Asthma affects the lives of millions of people in the United States, negatively impacting both school and work performance.

v The effect of asthma on academic and occupational performance is multi-dimensional, including illness-related absences as well as impaired ability when present. Most economic evaluations of asthma focus narrowly on school or work days lost, failing to take into account the larger aspect of productivity loss that occurs in the classroom or at the workplace in addition to not showing up altogether.

A study published in the March/April 2008 issue of Value in Health by Chen and colleagues employs a widely used productivity measure to estimate work, school, and other activity impairment in persons with severe asthma. Their results show that a substantial proportion of productivity loss due to asthma occurs while still at school or work, even though not absent. As important, the level of overall impairment in productivity correlates closely with other asthma outcomes, including symptom control, quality-of-life, and health care use.

"Productivity measurement is essential for understanding how and to what extent chronic conditions, especially asthma, affect people's everyday lives." says Dr. Chen, a Fellow at the Cardiovascular Research Institute of the University of California, San Francisco and a visiting clinical scientist at Genentech, Inc.

The development of an approach to quantifying productivity loss in asthma contributes a key tool in assessing health impacts and costs for this common and costly disease.

Value in Health is the official journal of the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR).
Value in Health (ISSN 1098-3015) publishes papers, concepts, and ideas that advance the field of pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research and help health care leaders to make decisions that are solidly evidence-based. The journal is published bi-monthly and has a regular readership of over 3,000 clinicians, decision-makers, and researchers worldwide.

ISPOR is a nonprofit, international organization that strives to translate pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research into practice to ensure that society allocates scarce health care resources wisely, fairly, and efficiently.

Value in Health Volume 11 Issue 2 - March/April 2008
ABSTRACT

http://www.ispor.org