Global Burden of Disease Study

The Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) is a comprehensive regional and global research program of

The Global Burden of Disease Study began in 1990 as a single World Bank-commissioned^[3] study that quantified the health effects of more than 100 diseases and injuries for eight regions of the world, giving estimates of morbidity and mortality by age, sex, and region. It also introduced the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) as a new metric to quantify the burden of diseases, injuries, and risk factors,^[4][5][6] to aid comparisons. GBD 1990 was "institutionalized" at the World Health Organization (WHO) and the research was "conducted mainly by researchers at Harvard and WHO".^[3]

In 2000–2002, the 1990 study was updated by WHO to include a more extensive analysis using a framework known as comparative risk factor assessment.^[5]

The WHO estimates were again updated for 2004 in The global burden of disease: 2004 update (published in 2008)^[7] and in Global health risks (published in 2009).^[5][8]

Official DALY estimates had not been updated by WHO since 2004

The Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 (GBD 2017) was published in October 2018.[19] The work was still coordinated at IHME. The life of Christopher Murray and the Global Burden of Disease Study is told in Epic Measures: One Doctor. Seven Billion Patients by Jeremey N. Smith.^[20]

GBD 2019 was published in The Lancet in October 2020.^[21]

Growth

The following table summarizes GBD's growth over the years.

Aims

The GBD has three specific aims:^{[citation needed]}

1. To systematically incorporate information on non-fatal outcomes into the assessment of the 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 the DALY (Disability Adjusted Life Years).^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

Results

The 2013 report showed that global

For most communicable causes of death both numbers of deaths and age-standardised death rates fell, while for most non-communicable causes, demographic shifts increased numbers of deaths but decreased age-standardised death rates.^[citation needed]

Global deaths from injury increased by 10.7%, from 4.3 million deaths in 1990 to 4.8 million in 2013; but age-standardised rates declined over the same period by 21%.

GBD 2015 found that for the first time, annual deaths from measles had fallen below 100,000 in 2013 and 2015.^[27][28][29] It also found that the global annual rate of new HIV infections has largely stayed the same during the past 10 years.^[30]

GBD 2015 also introduced the Socio-demographic Index (SDI) as a measure of a location's socio-demographic development that takes into account average income per person, educational attainment, and total fertility rate.^[31][32][33]

Reception

The results of the Global Burden of Disease Study have been cited by The New York Times,^[34] The Washington Post,^[35] Vox,^[36] and The Atlantic.^[37][38]

The World Health Organization did not acknowledge the GBD 2010 estimates.^[15][16]

Publications

The following is a table of GBD publications as of October 2020^[update].^{[39][40][41][42][43][44]}

"GBD 2010" proper means the paper was published as part of the original triple issue in The Lancet.

See also

• Alan Lopez
• Dan Wikler
• Disease Control Priorities Project
• Dean Jamison
• Health policy
• Pharmacoeconomics
• Priority-setting in global health

References