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Common Values in Health Outcomes from Disease & Injury: GBD 2010

2012

Measurement of the global burden of disease with disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) requires disability weights that quantify health losses for all non-fatal consequences of disease and injury. There has been extensive debate about a range of conceptual and methodological issues concerning the definition and measurement of these weights. The primary objective of this analysis was to re-estimate disability weights for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 through a large-scale empirical investigation in which judgments about health losses associated with many causes of disease and injury were elicited from the general public in diverse communities through a new, standardized approach.

Participants included 13,902 individuals through household surveys and 16,328 in the web survey. Analysis of paired comparison responses indicated a high degree of consistency across surveys. Most of the 220 disability weights were located on the mild end of the severity scale, with 58 (26%) having weights below 0.05. Five (11%) states had weights below 0·01, such as mild anaemia, mild hearing or vision loss, and secondary infertility. The health states with the highest disability weights were acute schizophrenia (0.76) and severe multiple sclerosis (0.71). The authors identified a broad pattern of agreement between the old and new weights (r=0.70), particularly in the moderate-to-severe range. However, in the mild range below 0·2, many states had significantly lower weights than in the previous study.

In contrast with the popular hypothesis that disability assessments vary widely across samples with different cultural environments, the results showed highly consistent results.

 

Source:

Salomon JA, Vos T, Hogan DR et al. Common Values in Assessing Health Outcomes from Disease And Injury: Disability Weights Measurement Study for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. The Lancet 2012; 380 (9859): 2129-2143. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61680-8