Data consistency in summary measures of population health

Two specific questions are addressed:
1) To what extent are causal disease models valid and useful to check the consistency of epidemiological frequency data and to supplement them?
2) How can disease-stage specific health status valuations be tailored to epidemiological frequency data?

We explored these two research questions on the basis of empirical data for two common diseases in the Netherlands: breast cancer and major depression. We chose these disorders for two reasons: they are both important health problems and they allow us to study the research questions from different perspectives. Breast cancer is important in particular because of the mortality it causes, while depression causes mainly morbidity. Also, for breast cancer epidemiological data are easily available and regarded as relatively reliable, whereas for major depression the data still suffer from several problems. Finally, the disease staging for breast cancer and major depression are based on different concepts. For major depression, stages were differentiated according to severity classes (e.g. mild, severe), while for breast cancer phases in the disease pathway were used (e.g. diagnosis and therapy, metastasised).