APERSU Newsletter -- Volume 2, Issue 1
Summer 2017

Report from Co-Directors

We are pleased to update you on recent activities of the Alberta PROMs and EQ-5D Research and Support Unit (APERSU) Team.

We welcomed five new members to our team in the first half of this year. In January, Hilary Short and Nathan McClure came onboard. Hilary is working primarily on the EMPATHY Project (see bio in newsletter) and Nathan McClure started his PhD under Jeff Johnson’s supervision. We also hired two summer students for APERSU, both of whom started in May, Andrews Tawiah and Tahmid Kashem. Andrews is a PhD Student in the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine and Tahmid is a MPH Student in the School of Public Health (see bios in newsletter). We welcomed a Post-Doctoral Fellow this month, Jennifer Jin. Jennifer recently completed her PhD under Dr. Feng Xie of the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster University. We look forward to sharing Jennifer’s bio with you in the next newsletter.

Our APERSU Board of Directors also experienced a change. We would like to say thank you and goodbye to Tania Bubela, who was the School of Public Health Representative on our Board of Directors. Tania has been appointed Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, beginning in July. Tania was always willing to share her expertise and legal clarification at our meetings. We welcome Kim Raine as the new School of Public Health Representative. Kim was able to attend the Board of Directors teleconference in February; we look forward to her participation in future meetings.

Since our last newsletter, we held teleconferences for both the Board of Directors and the Scientific Advisory Committee, to update the members on the progress of the APERSU team. As always, we gained valuable insight from these two committees.

We are looking forward to our 3rd Annual APERSU End-User Meeting, which will be held at the Coast Hotel and Conference Centre in Canmore, Alberta on November 15 and 16, 2017. We are very pleased to have Dr. Christopher Gibbons as our Keynote Speaker for this event. Dr. Gibbons holds numerous titles -- National Institute for Health Research Post-Doctoral Fellow based at the Cambridge Centre for Health Services Research, Director of Health Assessment and Innovation at The Psychometrics Centre, University of Cambridge and Research Associate at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. Dr. Gibbons is a co-author for the ongoing Cochrane review of PROMs in the primary care setting. We look forward to his presentation and input at our meeting.

Our APERSU Team has traveled and presented internationally this spring. The Annual EuroQol Academy meeting was held in Noordwijk, Netherlands in March. We organized the Minimal Important Difference (MID) workshop as part of the EuroQol Academy meeting in collaboration with Nancy Devlin and Mike Herdman of the Office of Health Economics in the UK. In May, we attended the Can-SOLVE CKD meeting was held in Montreal, the Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research (CAHSPR) meeting in Toronto, and the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) International meeting in Boston. One of our ISPOR abstracts was chosen for a podium presentation and nominated for a Research Presentation Award. We also participated in a panel discussion at the National Healthcare Leadership Conference in Vancouver in June.

On behalf of the APERSU Team, I want to wish all of you a very safe and enjoyable summer. We will update you again on APERSU’s activities in December.

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APERSU Publications

McClure NS, Al Sayah F, Xie F, Luo N, Johnson JA. Instrument-Defined Estimates of the Minimally Important Difference for EQ-5D-5L Index Scores. Value Health. 2017 Apr;20(4):644-650. [Selected as article of the month]. PMID: 28408007.

Al Sayah F, Johnson JA, Ohinmaa A, Xie F, Bansback N. Health literacy and logical inconsistencies in valuations of hypothetical health states: results from the Canadian EQ-5D-5L valuation study. Qual Life Res 2017;26(6):1483-1492. PMID: 28124280.

APERSU Presentations

Al Sayah F, Ohinmaa A, Johnson JA. How well does the EQ-%d-5L screen for mental health compared to the SF-12? EuroQol Academy Meeting, Noordwijk, The Netherlands, March 7-9, 2017. (Seminar).

Al Sayah F. EQ-5D use in Program Evaluation. APERSU Webinar Series, May 11, 2017.

McClure NS, Al Sayah F, Ohinmaa A, Johnson JA. Estimating a Minimally Important Difference of the EQ-5D-5L Index Score in Adults with Type 2 Diabetes. International Society for Pharmacoeconomics Outcomes Research (ISPOR) 22nd Annual International Meeting, Boston, MA, May 20-24, 2017. Value Health 2017:20(A174).

Al Sayah F, Ohinmaa A, Johnson JA. How well does the EQ-5D-5L screen for mental health compared to the SF-12? International Society for Pharmacoeconomics Outcomes Research (ISPOR) 22nd Annual International Meeting, Boston, MA, May 20-24, 2017. Value Health 2017:20(A333).

Crick K, Al Sayah F, Ohinmaa A, Johnson JA. How well do the EQ-5D-3L and 5L perform in assessing changes in mental health? [Podium Presentation] International Society for Pharmacoeconomics Outcomes Research (ISPOR) 22nd Annual International Meeting, Boston, MA, May 20-24, 2017. Value Health 2017:20(A12).

Al Sayah F. Capturing the patients' voice: The use of PROMs and PREMs in patient oriented research -- The Patient-Oriented Research (POR) Training Program. SPOR Career Development Platform, May 29, 2017. (Workshop).

Ohinmaa A. Using PROMs to support health system goals”, panel discussion: Patient-reported outcome and experience measures to support value-based care. National Healthcare Leadership Conference, Vancouver, June 13, 2017. (Invited Talk).