First even though the way they are calculated can be very different, in theory at least I think the DALY should just be opposite of a QALY, so QALYs gained = DALYs averted (in practise roughly) for a given intervention
Thanks so much, I had the same question for my OneDay Health cost-effectiveness post and was unsure what to do.d
In the “Doing good better” book they used I think 37.5 QALYs to a life but I’m not sure where they got that from (maybe using age discounting and like you say all life is not lived in good health?)
For my OneDay Health calculation to be conservative I used 82 as close to the “global maximum realistic” life expectancy, which is where you take the life expectancy from a country like Hong Kong or Japan and use that. Now it’s around 88 I think? The idea is that if every human is valued equally, this is the maximum realistic life expectancy given the best diet, medical care and other factors available
For DALY calculations now WHO uses 92, projecting out to 2050. “The loss function is based on the frontier national life expectancy projected for the year 2050 by the World Population Prospects 2012 (UN Population Division, 2013), with a life expectancy at birth of 92 years.”
But with all that said I’m not very helpful as I don’t have a clear answer for you ;). I could be wrong but I don’t think there’s a completely standard way of doing it.
You were rather conservative in choosing 82. It’d be fair to equate averting 82 DALYs to saving the life of a typical newborn and successfully immunizing said newborn from having any medical conditions that reduce their QALYs during their 82-year lifespan.
And of course the “typical” life saved is on average older than a newborn, so has fewer than 82 years of life remaining even before adjusting for DALY effects.
First even though the way they are calculated can be very different, in theory at least I think the DALY should just be opposite of a QALY, so QALYs gained = DALYs averted (in practise roughly) for a given intervention
Thanks so much, I had the same question for my OneDay Health cost-effectiveness post and was unsure what to do.d
In the “Doing good better” book they used I think 37.5 QALYs to a life but I’m not sure where they got that from (maybe using age discounting and like you say all life is not lived in good health?)
For my OneDay Health calculation to be conservative I used 82 as close to the “global maximum realistic” life expectancy, which is where you take the life expectancy from a country like Hong Kong or Japan and use that. Now it’s around 88 I think? The idea is that if every human is valued equally, this is the maximum realistic life expectancy given the best diet, medical care and other factors available
For DALY calculations now WHO uses 92, projecting out to 2050. “The loss function is based on the frontier national life expectancy projected for the year 2050 by the World Population Prospects 2012 (UN Population Division, 2013), with a life expectancy at birth of 92 years.”
But with all that said I’m not very helpful as I don’t have a clear answer for you ;). I could be wrong but I don’t think there’s a completely standard way of doing it.
You were rather conservative in choosing 82. It’d be fair to equate averting 82 DALYs to saving the life of a typical newborn and successfully immunizing said newborn from having any medical conditions that reduce their QALYs during their 82-year lifespan.
And of course the “typical” life saved is on average older than a newborn, so has fewer than 82 years of life remaining even before adjusting for DALY effects.