This booklet provides an overview of all findings from the Global Burden of Disease 2017 study, published in The Lancet.

How long one lives, how many years of life are spent in good and poor health, and how the population’s state of health and leading causes of disability change over time all have implications for policy, planning, and provision of services. We comparatively assessed the patterns and trends of healthy life expectancy (HALE), which quantifies the number of years of life expected to be lived in good health, and the complementary measure of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), a composite measure of disease burden capturing both premature mortality and prevalence and severity of ill health, for 359 diseases and injuries for 195 countries and territories over the past 28 years.

The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2017 (GBD 2017) includes a comprehensive assessment of incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability (YLDs) for 354 causes in 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2017. Previous GBD studies have shown how the decline of mortality rates from 1990 to 2016 has led to an increase in life expectancy, an aging global population, and an expansion of the non-fatal burden of disease and injury. These studies have also shown how a substantial portion of the world’s population experiences non-fatal health loss with considerable heterogeneity among different causes, locations, ages, and sexes. Ongoing objectives of the GBD study include increasing the level of estimation detail, improving analytical strategies, and increasing the amount of high-quality data.

Global development goals increasingly rely on country-specific estimates for benchmarking a nation’s progress. To meet this need, the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2016 estimated global, regional, national, and, for selected locations, subnational cause-specific mortality beginning in the year 1980. Here we report an update to that study, making use of newly available data and improved methods. GBD 2017 provides a comprehensive assessment of cause-specific mortality for 282 causes in 195 countries and territories from 1980 to 2017.

Assessments of age-specific mortality and life expectancy have been done by the UN Population Division, Department of Economics and Social Affairs (UNPOP), the United States Census Bureau, WHO, and as part of previous iterations of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD). Previous iterations of the GBD used population estimates from UNPOP, which were not derived in a way that was internally consistent with the estimates of the numbers of deaths in the GBD. The present iteration of the GBD, GBD 2017, improves on previous assessments and provides timely estimates of the mortality experience of populations globally.

Following the economic crisis in Greece in 2010, the country's ongoing austerity measures include a substantial contraction of health care expenditure, with reports of subsequent negative health consequences. The findings of increases in total deaths and accelerated population aging call for specific focus from health policymakers to ensure the health care system is equipped to meet the needs of the people in Greece.

This study used the estimates of the GBD to summarise the state of health in Spain in 2016 and report trends in mortality and morbidity from 1990 to 2016.

IHME Director Christopher Murray discusses a new study, published in JAMA, that covers 1990 to 2016. It is the most comprehensive state-by-state health assessment ever undertaken and includes estimates of prevalence, incidence, death, life expectancy, and several other summary health metrics for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Portugal: The Nation’s Health 1990–2016 explores the progress Portugal has experienced over the last 26 years, in terms of health, well-being, and development, and the new challenges it faces as its population grows and ages.

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.