Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards (CHEERS) statement

Abstract

Economic evaluations of health interventions pose a particular challenge for reporting. There is also a need to consolidate and update existing guidelines and promote their use in a user-friendly manner. The Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards (CHEERS) statement is an attempt to consolidate and update previous health economic evaluation guidelines efforts into one current, useful reporting guidance. The primary audiences for the CHEERS statement are researchers reporting economic evaluations and the editors and peer reviewers assessing them for publication.

 The need for new reporting guidance was identified by a survey of medical editors. A list of possible items based on a systematic review was created. A two round, modified Delphi panel consisting of representatives from academia, clinical practice, industry, government, and the editorial community was conducted. Out of 44 candidate items, 24 items and accompanying recommendations were developed. The recommendations are contained in a user-friendly, 24-item checklist. A copy of the statement, accompanying checklist, and this report can be found on the ISPOR Health Economic Evaluations Publication Guidelines Task Force website (www.ispor.org/TaskForces/EconomicPubGuidelines.asp).

 The hope is that CHEERS will lead to better reporting and, ultimately, better health decisions. To facilitate dissemination and uptake, the CHEERS statement is being co-published across 10 health economics and medical journals. Other journals and groups are encouraged to endorse CHEERS. The author team plans to review the checklist for an update in 5 years.

Keywords::

• Costs and cost analysis
• Biomedical Research/methods
• Biomedical Research/standards
• Guidelines as Topic/standards
• Humans
• Publishing/standards

Transparency

Declaration of funding

All CHEERS Task Force members are volunteers. Support for this initiative was provided by the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR).

Declaration of financial/other relationships

All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf and declare: FA served as a board member for the study funder; FA, AHB, CC, MD, DG, DH, EL, JM, and SP were provided support for travel to a face-to-face meeting to discuss the contents of the report; FA and MD have received payment from the study sponsor for serving as co-editors for Value in Health; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

All authors provided a substantial contribution to the design and interpretation of the protocol and guidance, as well as writing sections of drafts, revising based on comments received, and approving the final version. DH conducted the analysis of Delphi panel responses, drafted, and revised the protocol and the drafts of this paper, and is the guarantor for the study. EL—BMJ clinical epidemiology editor—played no part in the peer review or decision-making of this paper at the editorial level, and contributed solely as an author.

Acknowledgements

The International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) Health Economic Evaluation Publication Guidelines—CHEERS Task Force acknowledge the support of Elizabeth Molsen; Donna Rindress, who provided the initial leadership for this effort; and the reviewers and Delphi panel participants, who are named in the larger explanation and elaboration document and on the CHEERS Task Force website.

This article is a joint publication by Journal of Medical Economics, BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, BMC Medicine, BMJ, Clinical Therapeutics, Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation, The European Journal of Health Economics, International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care, Pharmacoeconomics, and Value in Health. Each publisher holds its own copyright.