Quality of life measurement in rehabilitation medicine: Building an agenda for the future

In November 2001, a conference convened to discuss the state of the science of measuring of quality of life (QOL) in rehabilitation medicine. The meeting brought together leading researchers in areas of behavioral health and physical medicine and rehabilitation to address the fragmentation that exists across specialty areas and disciplines. The goal was to bridge terminology, techniques, and advances across the fields of behavioral and rehabilitation medicine. The 5 topic areas included: (1) general versus targeted measurement, (2) QOL in policy development, (3) measuring QOL from the patient's perspective, (4) cultural aspects of QOL measurement, and (5) the future of QOL research. This introduction synthesizes the information presented at the conference and provides context to the articles contained in this 2-part supplement.