We analysed results from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019 to inform cancer control planning efforts globally.

View and download estimates of the world’s health from 1990 to 2021.

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

The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2017 comparative risk assessment (CRA) is a comprehensive approach to risk factor quantification that offers a useful tool for synthesizing evidence on risks and risk-outcome associations. With each annual GBD study, we update the GBD CRA to incorporate improved methods, new risks and risk-outcome pairs, and new data on risk exposure levels and risk-outcome associations.

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.

Japan has entered the era of super-aging and advanced health transition, which is increasingly putting pressure on the sustainability of its health system. The level and pace of this health transition might vary across regions within Japan and concern is growing about increasing regional variations in disease burden. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2015 (GBD 2015) provides a comprehensive, comparable framework. We used data from GBD 2015 with the aim to quantify the burden of disease and injuries, and to attribute risk factors in Japan at a subnational, prefecture level.

In Ethiopia there is no complete registration system to measure disease burden and risk factors accurately. In this study, the 2015 Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors (GBD) data were used to analyze the incidence, prevalence, and mortality rates of malaria in Ethiopia over the last 25 years.

In New Zealand, the Ministry of Health is using Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data to guide the country’s health strategy for the next 10 years and beyond. An extensive new report, entitled Health Loss in New Zealand 1990-2013: A report from the New Zealand Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors, provides a big-picture look at New Zealand’s health landscape. By outlining the major causes of health loss in the country over the past two decades, it aims to guide policymakers, funders, researchers, and front-line providers in their efforts to ensure that all New Zealanders are “living well, staying well, and getting well.”

The world’s most comprehensive tool for measuring disease burden and guiding government health agendas just got better. Last Friday, the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study enterprise – a collaboration among more than 1,800 health experts in 125 countries – launched updated estimates through 2015 for an expanded set of causes and risk factors for health loss in 195 countries and territories. To celebrate this update, IHME co-sponsored an event with The Lancet and the World Bank. The Washington, DC launch of GBD 2015 featured panels of experts and decision-makers who were convened to discuss the key findings of the study, and how GBD 2015 results may be used to identify and act on health issues around the globe. Here are a few great insights from experts who attended the launch on using data to improve health: “The study’s observations are important in the context of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Policy-makers need the best available evidence to make informed health policy decisions and to determine how to allocate resources. Some countries in sub-Saharan Africa face significant health challenges despite improvements in income and education, while other countries further behind in terms of development are seeing strong progress. Policymakers in all nations – from Senegal to South Africa and Equatorial Guinea to Eritrea – need to align spending to target the things that will make their communities healthier faster.” -Charles Shey Wiysonge, Deputy Director of the Centre for Evidence-based Health Care at Stellenbosch University and Chief Specialist Scientist of the South African Medical Research Council. Dr. Wiysonge is also a GBD collaborator. Read Dr. Wiysonge’s full post on the GBD 2015 study on the World Economic Forum’s website here. … “As a clinician, it’s important to be at this table. That is the army that is out there. That is the army that has the relationships with the patients and the communities. There is a real human being under these numbers, and our goal is to advance health. That means engaging clinicians around the world, partnering them effectively with ministries of health.” - Sudha Jayaraman, a practicing surgeon and Assistant Professor of Acute Care Surgical Services at Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Jayaraman is also a longtime GBD collaborator. … “We try to get as close to the truth as we possibly can by writing the story of health amongst the people on our planet. As we do so, we recognize progress, but we also see the huge challenges ahead. As we look at those challenges, we refuse to allow ourselves to be saddened by them. Indeed, we turn that around and make ourselves excited by the potential and the prize we have before us.” -Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet … “This linking of disease, geospatial mapping, and impact on programing is really extraordinarily important, and it allows us to model out the counterfactuals and factuals by different interventions … The more geospatial relevance and the more age and sex disaggregated data we have, the more we are able to see not only where we are, but model where we could be and make sure our policy decisions have impact.” -Deborah Birx, Ambassador-at-Large and United States Global AIDS Coordinator  

The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2013 (GBD 2013) provides the comprehensive, comparable framework through which such national and subnational analyses can occur. This study offers a state-level quantification of disease burden and risk factor attribution in Mexico for the first time.