GBD Publications

The Global Burden of Disease: Generating Evidence, Guiding Policy – East Asia and Pacific Regional Edition presents regional findings for the East Asia and Pacific region and summarizes intraregional differences in diseases, injuries, and risk factors. The report finds that countries in the East Asia and Pacific region show mixed progress in combating health challenges. Published by the World Bank and IHME, the report is based on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010 (GBD 2010), a collaborative effort of researchers from 50 countries around the world led by IHME at the University of Washington.

No systematic attempts have been made to estimate the global and regional prevalence of amphetamine, cannabis, cocaine, and opioid dependence, and quantify their burden. We aimed to assess the prevalence and burden of drug dependence, as measured in years of life lived with disability (YLDs), years of life lost (YLLs), and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs).

In 2012, data from GBD 2010 were published, providing results for 1990, 2005, and 2010. Hundreds of collaborators reported summary results for the world and 21 epidemiologic regions, covering 291 diseases and injuries, 1,160 sequelae of these causes, and mortality and burden attributable to 67 risk factors. GBD 2010 addressed a number of major limitations to previous analyses, including strengthening the statistical methods used for estimation and using disability weights derived from surveys of the general population. Metrics produced include leading causes of death, years of life lost, years lived with disability, and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), which are the years of healthy life lost by a person due to death or disability.

This policy report presents key findings from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010 (GBD 2010) for the US and documents trends in nearly 300 different diseases and injuries that are killing people prematurely and disabling them. The report sheds light on the substantial health threat posed by potentially modifiable risk factors such as poor diet, high body mass index, and lack of physical activity. It also provides an in-depth look at life expectancy, obesity, and physical activity in US counties.  

China has seen striking declines in child mortality and an increase in life expectancy due to rapid demographic and epidemiological changes in the past few decades, yet dietary risks, tobacco use, and the rise of non-communicable diseases such as cancer pose risks to continued improvements in health.

The United Kingdom has provided universal health care and public health programming for more than six decades. To guide future policymaking in the UK, it is important to analyze trends in population health over time. Using data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010 (GBD 2010), researchers examined three critical questions: what are the patterns of health loss in the UK, what are the leading preventable risks that explain some of those patterns, and how do UK outcomes compare to a set of comparable countries in the European Union (EU) and elsewhere in 1990 and 2010.

Individuals, households, and health systems devote enormous resources to curing, preventing, and eliminating non‐fatal, disabling health conditions. Therefore, it is essential that some form of measuring and tracking non‐fatal burdens be available for policy and planning purposes.

Healthy life expectancy, or HALE, is a measure of average population health summarizing both mortality and non‐fatal outcomes. HALE is used for comparisons of health across countries or for measuring change over time. These comparisons can shed light on key questions about how morbidity worsens or improves as mortality declines.

In this paper, results on years lost due to premature mortality (YLLs) and years lived with disability (YLDs) are combined to examine the overall burden of disease across 291 diseases and injuries by country for the period 1990 to 2010.