. "Overview of Analytic Approach and Results." Vaccines for the 21st Century: A Tool for Decisionmaking. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2000.
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Vaccines for the 21st Century: A Tool for Decisionmaking
BOX 4–4 Examples of Quality-Adjustment Weights Obtained Using the Health Utility Index
today, the life-expectancy is 29.2 years; the discounted quality-adjusted present value of that life expectancy is 15.7 years.
The average health status in the population represents the maximum level of health that can be achieved by use of the vaccines under study. Although an individual might be considered to experience periods of perfect health, represented by a quality-adjustment weight of 1.0, the health status of a population will reflect a range of individual quality levels and should not be represented by a quality-adjustment weight set at 1.0. The committee adopted HUI Mark II-based age- and sex-specific health status results from the Canadian NPHS (Wolfson, 1996) to serve as the quality-adjustment weights for the health status of the U.S. population. The weighted average of the population HUI ranges from 0.92 for people 44 years of age and under to 0.66 for people 85 years of age and older.
Disease Incidence and Death Rates
Estimates of current age-specific incidence and mortality for each condition were assembled on the basis of the published literature, the advice of experts in clinical medicine and epidemiology, and the judgment of committee members. Although data are available from surveillance systems for some of the condi-
