EQ-HWB

EQ-HWB development and intended area of use

The Foundation has developed the EQ Health and Wellbeing instrument (EQ-HWB), a 25-item generic measure for the assessment of health and wellbeing of patients, social care users and carers. A subset of these 25 items was selected to create a shorter instrument (EQ-HWB-S), with the aim of enabling the calculation of quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) to be used for evaluating interventions in health, public health and social care. The EQ-HWB is a product of a collaboration between the EuroQol Research Foundation and the University of Sheffield, as part of the research project titled “Going beyond health-related quality of life – towards a broader QALY measure for use across sectors (E-QALY)”.  Importantly, the EQ-HWB is not intended to replace the EQ-5D. Instead, it is being developed as a complementary instrument, assessing a range of dimensions – including, but not limited to, the impact on the health and wellbeing of social care recipients and caregivers.

EQ-HWB Working Group

To define and manage research priorities for both instruments, the EQ-HWB Working Group was established in March 2023. The Working Group will also oversee the development and validation process of the EQ-HWB and EQ-HWB-S.

IP status and use of EQ-HWB

In line with the Foundation’s current Intellectual Property (IP) Protection Policy, both the EQ-HWB and EQ-HWB-S have been given ‘Experimental Version’ status — i.e. they are currently only available to research collaborators, and not to potential users of the instruments. If you wish to engage in research on the EQ-HWB or EQ-HWB-S, please contact the EuroQol Office and request a collaborator form at eq-hwb@euroqol.org.

Available languages

The EQ-HWB and EQ-HWB-S were developed in English for the United Kingdom (UK). Six countries were involved in the development of EQ-HWB and EQ-HWB-S, including Argentina, Australia, China, Germany, the UK and the US, resulting in Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and German translations. Subsequently, the instruments have been translated into Arabic, Cantonese, Italian, Indonesian, Portuguese and Russian. Translation into further languages is currently underway.

Available versions

Considering the intended area of use closely related to social care users, self-complete, proxy 1 and interviewer administered versions have been created for both the EQ-HWB and EQ-HWB-S.

Ongoing research with the EQ-HWB

Both the EQ-HWB and EQ-HWB-S are being tested in multiple EuroQol-funded projects, involving the general population, patients, carers and care-recipients in over 10 countries. Additionally, ongoing R&D collaborations are in place to gather psychometric evidence that will help refine the two instruments, as well as informing further research.

Valuation of the EQ-HWB-S

Methods to develop preference-weighted value sets for the EQ-HWB-S are currently being explored. A pilot value set for the UK is available in Mukuria et al.

Any questions?

Please contact us if you have any questions about the EQ-HWB or EQ-HWB-S.

Key references:

Brazier J, Peasgood T, Mukuria C, Marten O, Kreimeier S, Luo N, Mulhern B, Pickard AS, Augustovski F, Greiner W, Engel L, Belizan M, Yang Z, Monteiro A, Kuharic M, Gibbons L, Ludwig K, Carlton J, Connell J, Rand S, Devlin N, Jones K, Tsuchiya A, Lovett R, Naidoo B, Rowen D, Rejon-Parrilla JC. The EQ-HWB: Overview of the Development of a Measure of Health and Wellbeing and Key Results. [FR8] Value Health. 2022 Apr;25(4):482-491.

Mukuria C, Peasgood T, McDool E, Norman R, Rowen D, Brazier J. Valuing the EQ Health and Wellbeing Short Using Time Trade-Off and a Discrete Choice Experiment: A Feasibility Study. [FR9] Value Health. 2023 Jul;26(7):1073-1084.

Peasgood T, Mukuria C, Brazier J, Marten O, Kreimeier S, Luo N, Mulhern B, Greiner W, Pickard AS, Augustovski F, Engel L, Gibbons L, Yang Z, Monteiro AL, Kuharic M, Belizan M, Bjørner J. Developing a New Generic Health and Wellbeing Measure: Psychometric Survey Results for the EQ-HWB. [FR10] Value Health. 2022 Apr;25(4):525-533.