Three important issues have recently attracted researchers to study the economics of disability. First with the availability of sophisticated "data sets," it has become possible to conduct highly quantative investigations of the relative economic impacts of various types of disabling health problems. Second, the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1991, and the subsequent implementation of its employment provisions, focused national attention on the continuing scarcity of employment opportunities for disabled persons. The tools of analysis that have been developed over the past...

Public health has, for many years, been concerned with efforts to increase the efficiency of health care delivery, to measure changes in health care resource utilization and associated costs, and to link these changes to different types of interventions. These efforts, as well as collaboration between biopharmaceutical organizations, producers of medical devices, and managed care and public health organizations, have been enhanced by the opportunities created within the fast growing field of outcomes research. This volume presents studies contributing to the enhancement of the outcomes...