1. Introduction
NCD, chronic diseases
DISEASES, DISEASE, CHRONIC DISEASES, SECONDARY, DISEASES
Non-communicable diseases (NCD) are associated with high costs for healthcare systems. We evaluated changes in total costs, comprising direct and indirect costs, due to a 24-month non-randomized, controlled lifestyle intervention trial with six measurement time points aiming to improve the risk profile for NCDs. Overall, 187 individuals from the general population aged ≥18 years were assigned to either the intervention group (IG; Diseases pose a major challenge to the healthcare system due to the enormously high costs associated with them. Of particular relevance in terms of healthcare costs are chronic diseases and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) [To address these challenges, primary and secondary prevention of lifestyle-related conditions by reducing risk factors constitute an important strategy [Published data from the Healthy Lifestyle Community Program (HLCP-1,HLCP-2 and HLCP-3), an intensive lifestyle intervention with a community-based approach, have shown that the program can result in metabolic and anthropometric improvements [To the best of our knowledge, there are no known health economic evaluations of community-based lifestyle interventions in real-world settings with a focus on NCDs that examine the impact of lifestyle interventions on participants’ total healthcare costs from a societal perspective. Most studies to date have focused on a cost-effectiveness analysis, relating the costs of the program to the effects achieved or targeting specific disease patterns and separate lifestyle factors [Therefore, we conducted a health economic analysis of the HLCP-2 by surveying total healthcare costs, i.e., participant-associated direct and indirect costs during the course of this study, as a secondary outcome of this study. In this regard, the hypothesis of this study was that the intervention would significantly reduce total, direct and indirect costs in the IG during the study period compared to baseline, both within the IG and compared to the CG.