Symptom status and functional status outcomes: humanistic outcomes in obesity disease management.

Abstract

Introduction Obesity is a complex, chronic health problem that is associated with increased mortality, morbidity, and health care costs, as well as decreased life quality (1–6). “The pathway to obesity is a complex journey,” involving biologic and genetic, emotional, social, and cultural factors (7). Changes in the U.S. health care delivery system, including managed care or disease management approaches, necessitate the development of systems that can be used to assess quality of care and demonstrate accountability in the health care of obese populations. Inherent in this is the identification of outcome, intermediate, and process measures (8,9). Disease management outcome measures must meet identified standards for scientific validity, relevance, and feasibility as outlined in the charge to the Team on Developing Obesity Outcomes and Learning Standards (TOOLS) Task Force of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity (NAASO) (10). The purpose of this paper is to recommend obesity disease management outcome measures to assess symptom status and functional status of populations in outcomes research evaluating the effectiveness of the management of obesity (grades I to III).