Achieving universal health coverage (UHC) requires health financing systems that provide prepaid pooled resources for key health services without placing undue financial stress on households. Understanding current and future trajectories of health financing is vital for progress toward UHC. We used historical health financing data for 188 countries from 1995 to 2015 to estimate future scenarios of health spending and pooled health spending through to 2040.
Results-based aid (RBA) is increasingly used to incentivize action in health. In Mesoamerica, the region consisting of southern Mexico and Central America, the RBA project known as the Salud Mesoamérica Initiative (SMI) was designed to target disparities in maternal and child health, focusing on the poorest 20% of the population across the region.
Several studies have measured health outcomes in the United States, but none have provided a comprehensive assessment of patterns of health by state. This study uses the results of the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) to report trends in the burden of disease, injuries, and risk factors at the state level from 1990 to 2016.
Infectious diseases are mostly preventable but still pose a public health threat in the United States, where estimates of infectious diseases mortality are not available at the county level. In this study, we estimate age-standardized mortality rates and trends by county from 1980 to 2014 from lower respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, HIV/AIDS, meningitis, hepatitis, and tuberculosis.
The mortality burden in children aged 5–14 years in the WHO European Region has not been comprehensively studied. We assessed the distribution and trends of the main causes of death among children aged 5–9 years and 10–14 years from 1990 to 2016, for 51 countries in the WHO European Region.
Substance use disorders, including alcohol use disorders and drug use disorders, and intentional injuries, including self-harm and interpersonal violence, are important causes of early death and disability in the United States. The purpose of this research was to estimate age-standardized mortality rates by county from alcohol use disorders, drug use disorders, self-harm, and interpersonal violence in the United States.
Insufficient growth during childhood is associated with poor health outcomes and an increased risk of death. Between 2000 and 2015, nearly all African countries demonstrated improvements for children under 5 years old for stunting, wasting, and underweight, the core components of child growth failure. Here we show that striking subnational heterogeneity in levels and trends of child growth remains.
Educational attainment for women of reproductive age is linked to reduced child and maternal mortality, lower fertility, and improved reproductive health. Comparable analyses of attainment exist only at the national level, potentially obscuring patterns in subnational inequality. Here we explore within-country inequalities by predicting years of schooling across five by five kilometer grids, generating estimates of average educational attainment by age and sex at subnational levels. Despite marked progress in attainment from 2000 to 2015 across Africa, substantial differences persist between locations and sexes.
An understanding of the trends in tuberculosis incidence, prevalence, and mortality is crucial to tracking of the success of tuberculosis control programs and identification of remaining challenges. We assessed trends in the fatal and non-fatal burden of tuberculosis over the past 25 years for 195 countries and territories.
Despite dramatic growth between 1990 and 2010, development assistance for health from high-income countries and development agencies to low- and middle-income countries has stagnated, and proposed cuts make future funding uncertain. To further understand international financial flows for health, we examined international contributions from major donor countries.
Eighteen percent of the world's population lives in India, and many states of India have populations similar to those of large countries. Action to effectively improve population health in India requires availability of reliable and comprehensive state-level estimates of disease burden and risk factors over time. Such comprehensive estimates have not been available so far for all major diseases and risk factors. Thus, we aimed to estimate the disease burden and risk factors in every state of India as part of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study 2016.
Health care spending in the United States increased substantially from 1995 to 2015 and comprised 17.8% of the economy in 2015. Understanding the relationship between known factors and spending increases over time could inform policy efforts to contain future spending growth. We quantified changes in spending associated with five fundamental factors related to health care spending in the United States: population size, population age structure, disease prevalence or incidence, service utilization, and service price and intensity.
The Salud Mesoamérica Initiative (SMI) is a three-operation strategy, and is a pioneer in the world of results-based aid (RBA) in terms of the success it has achieved in improving health system inputs following its initial operation. We investigated the influential aspects of SMI that could have contributed to its effectiveness in improving health systems, with the aim of providing international donors, bilateral organizations, philanthropies, and recipient countries with new perspectives that can help increase the effectiveness of future assistance for health, specifically in the arena of RBA.
In the poorest regions of Chiapas, Mexico, 50.2% of women in need of contraceptives do not use any modern method. A qualitative study was needed to design effective and culturally appropriate interventions.
Predicting when and where pathogens will emerge is difficult, yet, as shown by the recent Ebola and Zika epidemics, effective and timely responses are key. It is therefore crucial to transition from reactive to proactive responses for these pathogens. To better identify priorities for outbreak mitigation and prevention, we developed a cohesive framework combining disparate methods and data sources, and assessed subnational pandemic potential for four viral hemorrhagic fevers in Africa, Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever, Ebola virus disease, Lassa fever, and Marburg virus disease.
Liver cancer is among the leading causes of cancer deaths globally. The most common causes for liver cancer include hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and alcohol use.
During the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) era, many countries in Africa achieved marked reductions in under-5 and neonatal mortality. Yet the pace of progress toward these goals substantially varied at the national level, demonstrating an essential need for tracking even more local trends in child mortality. With the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, which established ambitious targets for improving child survival by 2030, optimal intervention planning and targeting will require understanding of trends and rates of progress at a higher spatial resolution. In this study, we aimed to generate high-resolution estimates of under-5 and neonatal all-cause mortality across 46 countries in Africa.
Chronic respiratory diseases are an important cause of death and disability in the United States. This study aims to estimate age-standardized mortality rates by county from chronic respiratory diseases.
Comparable data on the global and country-specific burden of neurological disorders and their trends are crucial for health care planning and resource allocation. In this systematic analysis, we quantified the global disease burden due to neurological disorders in 2015 and its relationship with country development level.
Detailed assessments of mortality patterns, particularly age-specific mortality, represent a crucial input that enables health systems to target interventions to specific populations. Understanding how all-cause mortality has changed with respect to development status can identify exemplars for best practice. To accomplish this, the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) estimated age-specific and sex-specific all-cause mortality between 1970 and 2016 for 195 countries and territories and at the subnational level for the five countries with a population greater than 200 million in 2016.
Monitoring levels and trends in premature mortality is crucial to understanding how societies can address prominent sources of early death. The Global Burden of Disease 2016 Study (GBD 2016) provides a comprehensive assessment of cause-specific mortality for 264 causes in 195 locations from 1980 to 2016. This assessment includes evaluation of the expected epidemiological transition with changes in development and where local patterns deviate from these trends.
Measurement of changes in health across locations is useful to compare and contrast changing epidemiological patterns against health system performance and identify specific needs for resource allocation in research, policy development, and program decision-making. Using the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016, we drew from two widely used summary measures to monitor such changes in population health: disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and healthy life expectancy (HALE). We used these measures to track trends and benchmark progress compared with expected trends on the basis of the Socio-demographic Index (SDI).
As mortality rates decline, life expectancy increases, and populations age, non-fatal outcomes of diseases and injuries are becoming a larger component of the global burden of disease. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) provides a comprehensive assessment of prevalence, incidence, and years lived with disability (YLDs) for 328 causes in 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2016.
The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) provides a comprehensive assessment of risk factor exposure and attributable burden of disease. By providing estimates over a long time series, this study can monitor risk exposure trends critical to health surveillance and inform policy debates on the importance of addressing risks in context.
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are grounded in the global ambition of “leaving no one behind.” Understanding today’s gains and gaps for the health-related SDGs is essential for decision-makers as they aim to improve the health of populations. As part of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016), we measured 37 of the 50 health-related SDG indicators over the period 1990–2016 for 188 countries, and then on the basis of these past trends, we projected indicators to 2030.
