Global Burden of Disease Archives - Humanosphere

Global Burden of Disease

A call for global health geeks to join forces with human rights activists |

Editor of The Lancet, Richard Horton, wants human rights activists and global health geeks to come together in common cause.

More than 500 public health experts, policy makers and academics from 50 different countries have gathered in Seattle this week to dig deeper into what one of the leaders in the field characterized as having done for global health what the Human Genome Project has done for biomedical science and medicine.

“This is the golden era for global health,” said Julio Frenk, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, on the opening day of the conference.

Part of what makes it golden, Frenk said, is the new Global Burden of Disease Study – a massive worldwide assessment of what’s killing, injuring and disabling people around the planet. The GBD, as its known, was created by some 500 researchers in 187 countries looking through hundreds of millions of reports on nearly 300 causes of death and disability.

It’s the global health community equivalent of sequencing all human DNA, Frenk said, and a sign that this field has entered its ‘Big Data’ stage. But data alone is not enough, Frenk said, adding that what’s needed is to use this data to create a truly global and ‘pluralistic’ community aimed at improving health.

And just as the human genome project did not proceed without controversy, neither has the Global Burden of Disease. As Lancet editor Richard Horton noted in his comments at the opening session of the Seattle meeting (and in the video above), contained within all these GBD measurements of death and disease are dicey political issues of justice, power and equity.

“Human rights and health metrics is not the most obvious marriage,” Horton said. In fact, he added, the human rights community often tends to look upon the health data community with suspicion, and vice versa. But numbers are not facts, he said, and disease charts do not naturally translate into policy decisions.

The next step for making the best use of this powerful new tool, he said, is to focus on translating the data into meaningful policy decisions and political action.

“We can use these new data, with the combined forces of the human rights and global health community, to make the uncounted count, to make the invisible more visible and to bring more attention to those now marginalized,” said Horton.

FILED UNDER: Health, Science, Chris Murray, Global Burden of Disease, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Julio Frenk, Richard Horton

June 14, 2013 | 11:20 AM | By Guest |

Vizualize Malnutrition |

: DFIDAt a recent summit in London, more than $4 billion to end hunger and malnutrition.

At a recent summit in London, donors pledged more than $4 billion to end hunger and malnutrition.

Hunger is one thing. Malnutrition is another. To begin with, hunger sounds like a problem that’s fairly easy to solve, in concept anyway. If hungry people are given food, problem solved. Malnutrition is more insidious. Young children who are chronically malnourished, even if later given food and kept from hunger, suffer long-term mental and physical damage.

And it exacts a massive financial toll as well: Read our post from last week on Malnutrition’s Global Cost: $3.5 Trillion.

Online data visualization tools created as part of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s Global Burden of Disease Study can be used to better understand why malnutrition is such a major health threat globally. These tools can also be used to track progress the world has made fighting this scourge.

Katie Leach-Kemon, a policy translation specialist at IHME, part of the University of Washington, walks us through some of these tools below. Check out the links to access the interactive version of the tool hosted at the Institute:

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Science, Global Burden of Disease, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, malnutrition, visual information

June 7, 2013 | 10:00 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Scientists identify China’s mysteriously massive cancer burden |

Flickr, PTorrodellas

Tai Chi in the park

Scientists in Seattle, Australia and China report in The Lancet today on the leading causes of death and disability – as well as the many positive health trends – in a rapidly modernizing China.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the study, based on Global Burden of Disease data compiled at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), found that China’s rapid economic development over the past few decades has been accompanied by a decline in ‘diseases of poverty’ like malaria, vaccine-preventable infectious diseases and child malnutrition.

The world’s largest nation and new emerging superpower also has seen remarkable progress at lowering childhood and maternal mortality, along with an equally unsurprising rise in the burden of diseases and disorders familiar to wealthier countries such as heart disease, stroke and dementia. Air pollution gets special attention as well.

NPR reported As China Gets Richer, First World Diseases Take Hold, which was the primary theme of the The Lancet special report on China. Similarly, Forbes reported that China’s health problems mirror wealthy nations.

Not quite.

One surprising – and not completely understood or explained – finding out of the study is that China appears to be the undisputed world leader for certain cancers: Liver, stomach and esophageal.

I asked a policy translation specialist at IHME, Katie Leach-Kemon, to dig into this a little deeper using one of IHME’s data visualization tools known as a ’cause pattern’ analysis. Leach-Kemon compiled this graphic below showing age-standardized rates of years-of-life-lost due to different cancers around the world. Here’s a link to the active chart online. Notice my red highlights:

UW IHME

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Science, cancer, China, Chris Murray, Global Burden of Disease, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington

March 7, 2013 | 11:40 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Ten disease burden stories from around the globe |

: Flickr, Oliver Erdmann

When Bill Gates and a gang of Seattle number-crunchers this week revealed the latest phase of the new Global Burden of Disease report – a massive survey of death and disability – news organizations focused on how their home countries scored.

Most media, Australia a notable exception, reported on how poorly they were doing.

Gates and the researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation emphasized that the GBD study, while it did focus on death and disease, also showed major improvements in many countries – especially with respect to child mortality and certain infectious diseases.

Read on for 10 stories spawned by this study from around the globe:

Britain (Guardian) Why are more Britons susceptible to disease? – “Report reveals smoking, diet, alcohol and drugs are the main contributors to the UK’s below average healthy life expectancy.”
Australia (News.com) Global Burden of Disease ranks Australia highly – “A new international comparison finds only Iceland and Switzerland outrank us in longevity and healthy life span.” Also of note (Australian Times) New study on life expectancy says we’re all going to die
United States (Reuters) Alzheimers Disease now fasting-growing threat in the US – “Alzheimer’s disease is the fastest-growing threat to Americans’ health, while early childhood illnesses and interpersonal violence are declining in frequency.”
China (contextChina) Poor diet, smoking and pollution are leading causes of death – “Over the past two decades China has made incredible progress in lifting large numbers of people out of poverty. But the side effects of the country’s unbridled economic growth include pollution, unhealthy diets and stress.”
India (Silicon India) Poor health performance ranks India below its neighbors – “India’s health performance has been reported to be at its worst when compared with the neighbouring countries.”
Russia (Moscow Times) Life expectancy stagnant – “Russia saw virtually no increase in life expectancy from 1990 to 2010 and lagged behind over 100 countries in the key health statistic over that period.”
South Africa (Mail & Guardian) AIDS most prevalent cause of deaths in South Africa - “Aids kills more people prematurely in SA than another other disease – in sharp contrast to two decades ago, which set it at just 12 percent.”
Canada (Montreal Gazette) Why poutine is dangerous for Canadians – “The leading risk factor among Canadians for early death and disability is poor dietary practices.” (Editors note: Poutine is french fries, cheese curds and gravy.)
Argentina (Clarin) Argentines live longer but with less quality (Translated by Google) – “Advances in the medical field now have a cruel irony for most people in the world – less early death, but live many years with disease.”
Spain (20 Minutos) Study warns of health impact of cuts in the Spanish health (Translated by Google) – “An international study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation warns that the significant cuts made in the Spanish health are reducing access to certain medical treatments, causing a direct impact on health.”

Here’s a video excerpt of Bill’s comments on Tuesday, at the Gates Foundation, where many were gathered to celebrate the release of the Global Burden of Diseases’s new tools for visually exploring and analyzing country health data:

FILED UNDER: Health, Global Burden of Disease, media

March 5, 2013 | 4:00 PM | By Tom Paulson |

Visualize Global Health |

It’s a new dawn for global health data borne of necessity, mind-numbing numbers, Netflix and a desire to avoid insanity.

“For our own sanity, we needed to create a new way to look at this stuff,” said Peter Speyer.

Speyer, head of data development at Seattle’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, explained why he and his colleagues are transforming a massive collection of health data known as the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) into a stunning collection of powerful online and interactive visual tools. Go to the link; below is just a screen grab. Seriously, go there and try these out. You’ll have fun even if you don’t know yet what you’re doing.

Today, Bill Gates and Speyer’s boss, IHME director Chris Murray, officially unveiled some of those tools aimed at allowing anyone (even you) to dig deeper into these global estimates arrived at by some 500 researchers working in collaboration worldwide for five years on more than 200 million results tracking the impact of nearly 300 causes of death and disability in 187 countries.

Phew. It makes your head hurt just to read that sentence. Imagine trying to compile a complete report including all of the numbers, statistics and charts.

“That’s one of the most exciting things about this phase of the project,” said Murray, who with his long-time partner in death-and-disability number crunching, Alan Lopez of the University of Queensland in Australia, has been trying for decades to create a reliable yardstick for measuring what’s going on in global health.

: Chris Murray; IHME

“I think these visual tools represent a significant paradigm change for global health,” Murray said. “They engage even the most data-resistant people. It’s an incredible revelation to me how profoundly influential it can be to present the data in this way. I think data visualization will be revolutionary for global health.”

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Science, Chris Murray, data visualization, Global Burden of Disease, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Peter Speyer

December 13, 2012 | 9:02 AM | By Tom Paulson |

The burden of a new global health agenda |

Flickr, Oliver Erdmann

A massive study of death, disability and disease on Earth, coordinated out of Seattle and to be officially published in The Lancet on Friday, could do for global health something like what Galileo did for the solar system.

It’s called the Global Burden of Disease (technically, the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries and Risk Factors Study 2010) and it is, like its earlier incarnations dating back to 1990, almost guaranteed to provoke and disrupt the international community’s approach to improving global health.

The good news is that people, in general, are living longer. The bad news is more of them seem to be fatter, still smoking too much and suffering from disabilities.

Just as the 16^th century astronomer Galileo – much to the dismay of the religious orthodoxy of the time – displaced Earth from its celestial prominence in favor of the Sun, the new Global Burden of Disease may displace infectious disease from its position as the categorical center of the global health universe.

Think the top three killers in the world are scourges like AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria? Think again, of heart disease, respiratory infections and stroke.

Think preventing death is the best way to tell if we’re winning the war on disease? You better think again about that as well since rates of obesity, chronic pain, injury and mental illness may say more….

Chris Murray

“We were surprised by many of the findings,” said Chris Murray, one of the founders of the study and director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.

“The simple purpose of this study has always been to provide the best scientific evidence on patterns of disease and disability to help us make sense of what’s happening out there and set priorities,” Murray said.

Sounds simple enough. So why did it take some 500 researchers more than five years to do it? Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Science, Alan Lopez, Chris Murray, Global Burden of Disease, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington

December 13, 2012 | 9:01 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Global Burden of Disease cause of death and disability from 1990 to 2010 |

The Global Burden of Disease’s comparison of 25 leading causes of death and disability between 1990 and 2010

FILED UNDER: Health, Science, Global Burden of Disease

December 13, 2012 | 9:00 AM | By Tom Paulson |

Global Burden of Disease regional comparison of Years of Life Lost between 1990 and 2010 |

The Global Burden of Disease, a comparison by region of Years of Life Lost (YLLs) by cause between 1990 and 2010.

Disparities apparent at a quick glance:

1. The dark black bar for the Caribbean in 2010 primarily represents the lives lost due to the earthquake in Haiti.

2. The taller yellow bar for Southern sub-Saharan Africa in 2010 is due to the much greater toll of HIV-AIDS. Note that the years of life lost due to diarrhea, lower respiratory infections in 1990 across sub-Saharan Africa was just slightly higher than in Asia and parts of Latin America.Twenty years later, this burden has been greatly reduced in Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America while remaining fairly high for much of Africa.

3. Note the light green and maroon color bars, which represent diabetes, urogenital, blood & endocrine disorders and cancer respectively. Both appear to consume a greater area of the chart in 2010, indicating an increase in YLLs due to these causes.