The demand of effective interventions in subhealth is growing with more and more people being in subhealth state and poor life quality. It is important to explore how to evaluate the effects of the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) interventions in subhealth, but it is difficult to conduct such an evaluation because of the broad meaning and varied types of subhealth, such as physical or psychological subtypes. The subtypes may be characterized by one of the symptoms like fatigue or pain, etc. Many symptoms of subhealth have no clear laboratory markers for diagnosis, and some symptoms may fluctuate with psychological and environmental factors. All of the above factors would increase the difficulty of effectiveness evaluation. The typical subtype of subhealth state and the intermediate outcome should be chosen for multidimensionally evaluating the effects of TCM interventions in subhealth at different time points.

Key words: Subhealth, Traditional Chinese medicine, Intervention studies, Treatment outcome