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 Science project has done for biomedical science and medicine. The Global Burden of Disease study – the new Global Burden of Disease Study – a massive worldwide assessment of what’s killing, injuring and disabling people around the planet. The GBD was created by some 500 researchers in 187 countries looking through hundreds of millions of reports on nearly 300 causes of death and disability.