Significant advances have been made in the development of methods for assessing health status and health related quality of life (HRQOL) over the past two decades. Much of this work has focused on: (1) defining the dimensions of health; (2) developing an array of generic and disease specific instruments; and (3) demonstrating their reliability and validity for a variety of applications including both evaluative and policy research. Only recently, however, have these measures been applied in assessing injury outcome. As the injury field increasingly focuses its attention on the prevention and treatment of non-fatal injuries and their consequences, the broader use of these measures becomes imperative. Just as we have developed standardized approaches for counting and classifying injuries, so too must we develop and broadly apply methods for monitoring their impact on the individual and society. This paper reviews several consumer-oriented measures of health status and HRQOL that are relevant to the study of injury outcomes, and cautions us to be mindful of the challenges involved in their application.
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