ABSTRACT
Quality-adjusted life year (QALYs) is a measure of the state of health of a person or group in which the benefits, in terms of length of life, are adjusted to reflect the quality of life. One QALY is equal to 1 year of life in perfect health. QALYs are calculated by estimating the years of life remaining for a participant following an intervention and weighting each year with a quality of life score (on a 0 to 1 scale). This can be measured in terms of the person’s ability to perform the activities of daily life, freedom from pain, and mental disturbance.30 Results from FFIT indicated that the cost per QALY gained fell below the threshold of £20,000 used by NICE, and in turn, the intervention was considered cost-effective. Overall, the FFIT programme enabled a substantial proportion of men to lose a clinically important amount of weight. FFIT is a powerful piece of research that should be used by other community foundations. However, given the costs of FFIT [in the region of £1 million], it is unlikely that community foundations could resource this level of research. As such community foundations should seek to learn from this research and develop workable programmes and evaluations in their setting.
