Chapter 36
Quality of Life
36.1 Background
The term quality of life (QoL) has been used in a wide variety of ways. In the broadest definition, the quality of our lives is influenced by our physical and social environment as well as our emotional and existential reactions to that environment. From a societal or global perspective, measures of QoL may include social and environmental indicators, such as whether there is affordable housing and how many days of air pollution there are each year in a particular location. These are general issues that concern everyone in a society. Kaplan and Bush [22] proposed the use of the term health-related quality of life (HRQoL) to focus on the specific role of health effects on the individual’s perceptions of well-being, distinguishing these from job satisfaction and environmental factors. In the medical literature, the terms QoL and HRQoL have become interchangeable.
36.1.1 Health-Related Quality of Life
The World Health Organization (WHO) defined health in 1948 [38,39] as a “state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of infirmity and disease.” This definition reflects the focus on a broader picture of health. Wilson and Cleary [37] propose a conceptual model of the relationships among health outcomes. There are five levels of outcomes that progress from biomedical measures to quality of life reflecting the WHO definition of health. The biological and physiological ...
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