Presentation (CTI)

OBJECTIVES: The association between health outcomes and patient health-related attitudes and emotions is an understudied research topic. Delineating these associations may engender a more comprehensive assessment of health outcomes and their predictors in future research agendas, spanning from burden of illness studies to implementation science. We assessed the association between specific attitudes, emotions, and health outcomes in a nationally representative real-world dataset.
METHODS: Data from the 2024 US National Health and Wellness Survey, a cross-sectional, nationally representative, general population survey, were used. Associations between patient attitudes (e.g., Brief Resilience Scale [BRS], opinions about healthcare professionals [HCPs], etc.), emotions (e.g., Modified Medical Outcomes Study Social Support Survey [mMOS-SS], pessimism, etc.), and health outcomes (e.g., healthcare resource use, work productivity and activity impairment [WPAI], health-related quality of life [HRQoL], etc.) were assessed with statistically appropriate correlations (e.g., Spearman rho) without adjustment for covariates.
RESULTS: Analyses included 75,013 respondents. Patient attitudes and emotions were significantly correlated (p<0.05) with many health outcomes. Some attitude/emotion and health outcome pairings were only weakly correlated (r= 0.0-0.39), whereas other pairings were moderately correlated (r= 0.40-0.59). For example, BRS scores, mMOS-SS scores, and trust in HCP attentiveness were associated with absenteeism (r= -0.34, -0.16, -0.06), presenteeism (r= -0.40, -0.20, -0.06), HCP visit frequency (r= 0.07, 0.17, 0.29), ER visit frequency (r= -0.16, -0.05, 0.02), hospitalization frequency (r= -0.16, -0.05, 0.03), EQ-5D index scores (r= 0.27, 0.12, 0.01), GAD-7 summary scores (r= -0.50, -0.22, -0.11), and PHQ-9 summary scores (r= -0.48, -0.23, -0.10), to different extents, respectively.
CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that there is meaningful variation in the extent to which specific attitudes and emotions are associated with specific health outcomes. As such, these results provide guidance for future empirical research, in terms of which patient attitudes and emotions should be assessed in conjunction with specific health outcomes.