How do combinations of unhealthy behaviors relate to attitudinal factors and subjective health among the adult population in the Netherlands?

BACKGROUND: Health behaviours like smoking, nutrition, alcohol consumption and physical activity (SNAP) are often studied separately, while combinations can be particularly harmful. This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of lifestyle choices by studying the prevalence of (combinations of) unhealthy SNAP behaviours in relation to attitudinal factors (time orientation, risk attitude) and subjective health (self-rated health, life expectancy) among the adult Dutch population. METHODS: In total 1006 respondents, representative of the Dutch adult population (18-75 years) in terms of sex, age, and education, were drawn from a panel in 2016. They completed an online questionnaire. Groups comparisons and logistic regression analyses (crude and adjusted) were applied to analyse (combinations of) SNAP behaviours in relation to time orientation (using the Consideration of Future Consequences scale comprising Immediate (CFC-I) and Future (CFC-F) scales) and risk attitude (Health-Risk Attitude Scale; HRAS-6), as well as subjective health (visual analogue scale and subjective life expectancy). RESULTS: In the analyses, 989 respondents (51% men, average 52 years, 22% low, 48% middle, and 30% high educated) were included. About 8% of respondents engaged in four unhealthy SNAP behaviours and 18% in none. Self-rated health varied from 5.5 to 7.6 in these groups, whilst subjective life expectancy ranged between 73.7 and 85.5 years. Logistic regression analyses, adjusted for socio-demographic variables, showed that smoking, excessive drinking and combining two or more unhealthy SNAP behaviours were significantly associated with CFC-I scores, which increased the odds by 30%, 18% and 19%, respectively. Only physical inactivity was significantly associated with CFC-F scores, which increased the odds by 20%. Three out of the four SNAP behaviours were significantly associated with HRAS-6, which increased the odds between 6% and 12%. An unhealthy diet, excessive drinking, and physical inactivity were significantly associated with SRH, which decreased the odds by 11%. Only smoking was significantly associated with subjective life expectancy, which decreased the odds by 3%. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that attitudinal factors and subjective health are relevant in the context of understanding unhealthy SNAP behaviours and their clustering. This emphasizes the relevance of a holistic approach to health prevention rather than focusing on a single unhealthy SNAP behaviour.

The Corrective Approach: Policy Implications of Recent Developments in QALY Measurement Based on Prospect Theory.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Common health state valuation methodology, such as time tradeoff (TTO) and standard gamble (SG), is typically applied under several descriptively invalid assumptions, for example, related to linear quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) or expected utility (EU) theory. Hence, the current use of results from health state valuation exercises may lead to biased QALY weights, which may in turn affect decisions based on economic evaluations using such weights. Methods have been proposed to correct responses for the biases associated with different health state valuation techniques. In this article we outline the relevance of prospect theory (PT), which has become the dominant descriptive alternative to EU, for health state valuations and economic evaluations. METHODS AND RESULTS: We provide an overview of work in this field, which aims to remove biases from QALY weights. We label this "the corrective approach." By quantifying PT parameters, such as loss aversion, probability weighting, and nonlinear utility, it may be possible to correct TTO and SG responses for biases in an attempt to produce more valid estimates of preferences for health states. Through straightforward examples, this article illustrates the effects of this corrective approach and discusses several unresolved issues that currently limit the relevance of corrected weights for policy. CONCLUSIONS: Suggestions for research addressing these issues are provided. Nonetheless, if validly corrected health state valuations become available, we argue in favor of using these in economic evaluations.

Process utility from providing informal care: the benefit of caring.

Though economics is usually outcome-oriented, it is often argued that processes matter as well. Utility is not only derived from outcomes, but also from the way this outcome is accomplished. Providing care on a voluntary basis may especially be associated with such process utility. In this paper, we discuss the process utility from providing informal care. We test the hypothesis that informal caregivers derive utility not only from the outcome of informal care, i.e. that the patient is adequately cared for, but also from the process of providing informal care. We present empirical evidence of process utility on the basis of a large sample of Dutch caregivers (n=950). We measure process utility as the difference in happiness between the current situation in which the care recipient is cared for by the caregiver and the hypothetical situation that someone else takes over the care tasks, all other things equal. Other background characteristics on patient and caregiver characteristics, objective and subjective caregiver burden and quality of life are also presented and related to process utility. Our results show that process utility exists and is substantial and therefore important in the context of informal care. Almost half of the caregivers (48.2%) derive positive utility from informal care and on average happiness would decline if informal care tasks were handed over to someone else. Multivariate regression analysis shows that process utility especially relates to caregiver characteristics (age, gender, general happiness, relation to patient and difficulties in performing daily activities) and subjective caregiver burden, whereas it also depends on the number of hours of care provided (objective burden). These results strengthen the idea of supporting the use of informal care, but also that of keeping a close eye on the position of carers.