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.

The scale-up of tobacco control, especially after the adoption of the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control, is a major public health success story. Nonetheless, smoking remains a leading risk for early death and disability worldwide, and therefore continues to require sustained political commitment. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) offers a robust platform through which global, regional, and national progress toward achieving smoking-related targets can be assessed.

Public Health England (PHE) just wrapped up the fifth year of their “Stoptober” challenge, a campaign to get 7 million people in England to stop smoking. This campaign reflects one of the seven priorities outlined in PHE’s plan of action, “From evidence into action: opportunities to protect and improve the nation’s health,” which was crafted using data from the Global Burden of Disease Study. 

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.

The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2015 provides an up-to-date synthesis of the evidence for risk factor exposure and the attributable burden of disease. By providing national and subnational assessments spanning the past 25 years, this study can inform debates on the importance of addressing risks in context. 

The GBD 2015 study shows that, from 1990 to 2015, the world as a whole has been undergoing an epidemiological transition. The nature of that transition is discussed in this report. 

This week, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Nairobi, announcing that his country would help the Kenyan government build a high-tech cancer treatment center in the capital. At the same time, 65 health practitioners gathered in another part of the city to plan for an even bigger project: tackling all non-communicable diseases (NCDs). As a first step toward this goal, the International Center for Humanitarian Affairs (ICHA) at the Kenya Red Cross and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), in collaboration with the Kenya Ministry of Health, produced a report that examines health progress over the past 23 years, as well as the challenges the country faces as its population grows and Kenya’s health landscape shifts.