Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

SARDs are a group of inflammatory arthritis diseases (including lupus) that mainly strike young women, wherein the body launches an attack against its own tissues. Lifespan and quality-of-life are reduced by serious damage to the lungs, brain, heart, blood vessels and kidneys from both the diseases themselves, and the toxic effects of their immunosuppressive therapies. The physical manifestations of SARDs also limit patients' ability to participate in childcare, domestic activities, school, and paid work during their prime reproductive and career years. In fact, many patients become unable to work within two years of diagnosis. But while SARDs are believed quite costly to the healthcare system and society, the long-term costs of these chronic disorders, and what influences them, are not well known, partly because it has been difficult to collect all the information required to analyze these costs. Provincial healthcare claims databases can be used to compare the healthcare resources (outpatient visits & tests, hospitalizations, and prescription drugs) used by ALL people with SARDs in the province, to those used by a similar group of people without SARDs (controls). But these databases are missing some important information like height and weight, smoking history, use of non-prescription medications, and time missed from paid and unpaid work. And while some of this information is available from SARD patients attending special clinics, such patients tend to differ from other SARD patients. We have now developed a way to resolve this problem, and better understand the costs of SARDs: (1) use the claims databases to identify ALL adult SARD cases in BC (and a control group); (2) directly survey a random sample of the same cases and controls to obtain the extra information about health status, healthcare use, and work activities; and (3) link the survey data with their healthcare claims. This approach could now be used to enhance research into other chronic diseases.