Global Burden of Disease Study

The global burden of disease (GBD) is a comprehensive regional and global assessment of mortality and disability from 107 diseases and injuries and ten risk factors. The GBD is assessed using the GBD study by the World Health Organization (WHO), and is an example of an evidence-based input to public health policy debate. The aim of the study was to provide information and projections about disease burden on a global scale.

The GBD project was initiated in 1992 and is currently a collaborative effort between more than 800 experts worldwide, including researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), WHO and the World Bank. The original project estimated health gaps using disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for eight regions of the world in 1990. It provides a standardised approach to epidemiological assessment and uses a standard unit, the disability-adjusted life year (DALY), to aid comparisons.

The GBD has three specific aims:

1. To systematically incorporate information on non-fatal outcomes into the assessment of health status (using a time-based measure of healthy years of life lost due either to premature mortality or to years lived with a disability, weighted by the severity of that disability)
2. To ensure that all estimates and projections were derived on the basis of objective epidemiological and demographic methods, which were not influenced by advocates.
3. To measure the burden of disease using a metric that could also be used to assess the cost-effectiveness of interventions. The metric chosen was Disability-Adjusted Life Years, or DALYs

The burden of disease can be viewed as the gap between current health status and an ideal situation in which everyone lives into old age free of disease and disability. Causes of the gap are premature mortality, disability and exposure to certain risk factors that contribute to illness.

The GBD is now in its fifth round. The work will quantify the burdens of more than 400 major causes of death and disability disaggregated by 21 geographic regions and various age-sex groups. Risk factors are evaluated and projections to are being made.

References

• Global burden of disease at WHO website
• GBD Publications from Harvard School of Public Health
• Global Burden of Disease Mental Disorders and Illicit Drug Use Expert Group at National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (University of New South Wales, Australia)
• Global Burden of Disease at Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation website

See also

• Pharmacoeconomics