Increasing attention is being paid to the marked disparities in diabetes prevalence and health outcomes in the United States. There is a need to identify the small-area geographic variation in diabetes risk and related outcomes, a task that current health surveillance methods, which often rely on a self-reported diagnosis of diabetes, are not detailed enough to achieve. Broad adoption of electronic health records (EHR) and routine centralized reporting of patient-level data offers a new way to examine diabetes risk and highlight hotspots for intervention.
The increasing global stroke burden strongly suggests that currently implemented primary stroke prevention strategies are not sufficiently effective, and new primary prevention strategies with larger effect sizes are needed. Here, we review the latest stroke epidemiology literature, with an emphasis on the recently published Global Burden of Disease 2013 Study estimates; highlight the problems with current primary stroke and cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention strategies; and outline new developments in primary stroke and CVD prevention.
Since 2000, international funding for HIV has supported scaling up antiretroviral therapy (ART) in sub-Saharan Africa. However, such funding has stagnated for years, threatening the sustainability and reach of ART programs amid efforts to achieve universal treatment. Improving health system efficiencies, particularly at the facility level, is an increasingly critical avenue for extending limited resources for ART; nevertheless, the potential impact of increased facility efficiency on ART capacity remains largely unknown. Through the present study, we sought to quantify facility-level technical efficiency across countries, assess potential determinants of efficiency, and predict the potential for additional ART expansion.
Timely assessment of the burden of HIV/AIDS is essential for policy setting and programme evaluation. In this report from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (GBD 2015), we provide national estimates of levels and trends of HIV/AIDS incidence, prevalence, coverage of antiretroviral therapy (ART), and mortality for 195 countries and territories from 1980 to 2015.
As the outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa is now contained, attention is turning from control to future outbreak prediction and prevention. Building on a previously published zoonotic niche map, this study incorporates new human and animal occurrence data and expands upon the way in which potential bat EVD reservoir species are incorporated.
In 2013 the United States spent $2.9 trillion on health care, more than in any previous year. Much of the debate around slowing health care spending growth focuses on the complicated pricing system for services. Our investigation contributes to knowledge of health care spending by assessing the relationship between charges and payments in the inpatient hospital setting. In the US, charges and payments differ because of a complex set of incentives that connect health care providers and funders.
With recent improvements in vaccines and treatments against viral hepatitis, an improved understanding of the burden of viral hepatitis is needed to inform global intervention strategies. We used data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study to estimate morbidity and mortality for acute viral hepatitis, and for cirrhosis and liver cancer caused by viral hepatitis, by age, sex, and country from 1990 to 2013.
The contribution of modifiable risk factors to the increasing global and regional burden of stroke is unclear, but knowledge about this contribution is crucial for informing stroke prevention strategies. We used data from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 (GBD 2013) to estimate the population attributable fraction (PAF) of stroke-related disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) associated with potentially modifiable environmental, occupational, behavioral, physiological, and metabolic risk factors in different age and sex groups worldwide and in high-income countries and low-income and middle-income countries, from 1990 to 2013.
This paper investigates trends in suicide rate, the reasons for and means of suicide and the occupation of deceased, to prioritize suicide prevention activities in India and to highlight the limitations to data quality for surveillance.
Chikungunya fever is an acute febrile illness caused by the chikungunya virus (CHIKV), which is transmitted to humans by Aedes mosquitoes. Here we comprehensively assess the global distribution of chikungunya and produce high-resolution maps, using an established modeling framework that combines a comprehensive occurrence database with bespoke environmental correlates, including up-to-date Aedes distribution maps.
China and India jointly account for 38% of the world population, so understanding the burden attributed to mental, neurological, and substance use disorders within these two countries is essential. As part of the Lancet/Lancet Psychiatry China–India Mental Health Alliance Series, we aim to provide estimates of the burden of mental, neurological, and substance use disorders for China and India from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 (GBD 2013).
Little is known about survival outcomes of HIV patients on first-line antiretroviral therapy (ART) on a large-scale in India, or facility level factors that influence patient survival to guide further improvements in the ART program in India. We examined factors at the facility level in addition to patient factors that influence survival of adult HIV patients on ART in the publicly-funded ART program in a high- and a low-HIV prevalence state.
Young people’s health has emerged as a neglected yet pressing issue in global development. Changing patterns of young people’s health have the potential to undermine future population health as well as global economic development unless timely and effective strategies are put into place. We report the past, present, and anticipated burden of disease in young people aged 10–24 years from 1990 to 2013 using data on mortality, disability, injuries, and health risk factors.
Indigenous women in Mesoamerica experience disproportionately high maternal mortality rates and are less likely to have institutional deliveries. Identifying correlates of institutional delivery, and satisfaction with institutional deliveries, may help improve facility utilization and health outcomes in this population. We used baseline surveys from the Salud Mesoamérica Initiative to analyze data from 10,895 indigenous and non-indigenous women in Guatemala and Mexico (Chiapas State) and indigenous women in Panama.
Zika virus was discovered in Uganda in 1947 and is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, which also act as vectors for dengue and chikungunya viruses throughout much of the tropical world. Possible associations with microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome observed in this outbreak have raised concerns about continued global spread of Zika virus, prompting its declaration as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization. We conducted species distribution modelling to map environmental suitability for Zika. We show a large portion of tropical and sub-tropical regions globally have suitable environmental conditions with over 2.17 billion people inhabiting these areas.
Dengue is a serious global burden. Objective, systematic, comparable measures of dengue burden are needed to track health progress, assess the application and financing of emerging preventive and control strategies, and inform health policy. We estimated the global economic burden of dengue by country and super-region.
Disbursements of development assistance for health (DAH) have risen substantially during the past several decades. More recently, the international community’s attention has turned to other international challenges, introducing uncertainty about the future of disbursements for DAH.
In this study, we use past trends and relationships to estimate future health spending, disaggregated by the source of those funds, to identify the financing trajectories that are likely to occur if current policies and trajectories evolve as expected.
Increased demand for antiretroviral therapy (ART) services combined with plateaued levels of development assistance for HIV/AIDS requires that national ART programs monitor program effectiveness. In this pilot study, we compared commonly utilized performance metrics of 12- and 24-month retention with rates of viral load (VL) suppression at 15 health facilities in Uganda.
The health status of the young people is an important indicator for future health and health care needs of the next generation. In order to understand the health risk factors of Saudi youth, we analyzed data from a large national survey in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The burden of cancer in Mexico shows complex regional patterns by age, sex, types of cancer, and deprivation status. The study analyzed mortality and incidence for 28 cancers by deprivation status, age and sex from 1990 to 2013.
Under-5 mortality in Zambia has declined since 1990, with reductions accelerating after 2000. Zambia’s scale-up of malaria control is viewed as the driver of these gains, but past studies have not fully accounted for other potential factors. This study sought to systematically evaluate the impact of malaria vector control on under-5 mortality.
High-quality epidemiological studies evaluating the burden of cutaneous leishmaniasis worldwide are lacking. We compared the burden of cutaneous leishmaniasis in each country to the overall global burden and assessed the equality of cutaneous leishmaniasis burden across different countries and regions.
Dengue is the most common arbovirus infection globally, but its burden is poorly quantified. We estimated dengue mortality, incidence, and burden for the Global Burden of Disease study 2013.
