Translation and cultural adaptation of the Health Utilities Preschool to Brazilian Portuguese

Health research is particularly important in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where improvements must be achieved with limited resources, and where the great majority of the world's population, especially children, live. Improvements in public health detection in Brazil have resulted in cancer becoming the most prevalent cause of death by disease in the group aged 1 to 19 years, hence, delivering cost-effective care to the group is a priority. Preference-based measures of health status and health-related quality of life (HRQL) integrate morbidity and mortality and provide utility scores for the estimation of quality-adjusted life years to be used in cost-effectiveness analyses and economic evaluation. The generic preference-based instrument Health Utilities - Preschool (HuPS) measures the health status of young children and is applicable to the age group 2 to 5 years, who carry the highest incidence of cancer in childhood.

The translation of the HuPS classification system followed recommended protocols from published guidelines. Forward and backward translations were performed by a team of six qualified professionals and linguistic validation was undertaken with a sample of parents of preschool children.

Initial disagreements on individual words occurring in 0.5-1.5% were resolved by consensus. A final version of the instrument was validated by the sample of parents.

The translation and cultural adaptation of the HuPS into Brazilian Portuguese were accomplished as the first step in the validation of the HuPS instrument in Brazil.