Measuring What Matters: Multidimensional Health Assessment, Real-World Outcomes and the Role of Traditional Complementary and Integrative Medicine

Do conventional health instruments capture the outcomes that matter for public health? Constructs like purpose in life, sense of coherence, and spiritual well-being are associated with lower population-level mortality, yet none are adequately captured by EQ-5D, SF-36, or PROMIS-29, the instruments most used in health technology assessment, and which recent reanalyses show collapse onto one "self-reported health" dimension. Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine (TCIM) systems and Indigenous communities have long recognised there are broader, multiple dimensions of health, wellbeing and lived experiences, raising important questions about whether current measurement approaches adequately capture what matters to people, communities and populations. When measurement frameworks miss meaningful change, public health decisions rest on incomplete evidence. This is especially consequential for complex, whole-system interventions, including TCIM, present in 170+ WHO Member States — and calls for methods suited to this complexity are now international: e.g., NCCIH, UK MRC/NIHR, and the WHO Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025–2034. Notably, the WHO Global Reference List of TCIM Indicators stops at structures and outputs, with no validated person-level measure bridging the two levels.Despite this, no comprehensive collection has examined the intersection of multidimensional measurement, real-world evidence, and public health policy. This Research Topic gathers empirical, methodological, and policy perspectives on assessing health beyond what conventional frameworks capture — clarifying what matters, to whom, and how — and whether broader approaches improve interpretability, utility, equity, and decision-making. Four axes organize the collection: (1) Critical appraisal of measurement approaches — dimensional coverage, psychometric properties, and cross-cultural applicability of patient-reported, clinician-rated, and diagnostic instruments for complex interventions, in dialogue with traditional-medicine knowledge systems; (2) Multidimensional assessment frameworks — development, evaluation and health system implementation, application to clinical and epidemiological research, real-world evidence, including through practice-based research networks and community case studies(3) Methodological innovation to overcome single-outcome designs — multiple and synergistic outcomes, individual- versus average-level effects, nonlinear dynamical systems, network approaches, core outcome sets, mixed methods, and minimum datasets; (4) Policy translation and comparative effectiveness — how measurement choices, including deficit-versus resource-oriented measurement, shape evidence standards and health technology assessments, public health indicators, regulatory and funding decisions, and health care delivery and access.We welcome contributions addressing one or more of the four axes outlined above. Submissions may focus on individual, community, population or health-system levels of analysis, and draw upon a broad range of methodologies relevant to public health, implementation science, data science, and Indigenous research methodologies. We encourage interdisciplinary work that bridges conceptual, methodological and applied research, and explores novel approaches.Contributions from low- and middle-income countries, TCIM and Indigenous researchers and communities, and culturally diverse settings are encouraged. The collection advances the science of health measurement for complex, multicomponent care without advocating for specific systems. Accepted article types: Original Research, Systematic Review, Scoping Review, Perspective, Methods, Policy Brief, and Community Case Study. Topic editors: Caio Fábio Schlechta Portella, João Paulo Souza, Jon Adams, Jennifer Hunter Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/79616/measuring-what-matters-multidimensional-health-assessment-real-world-outcomes-and-the-role-of-traditional-complementary-and-integrative-medicine