Global Burden of Disease Study

The Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) is a comprehensive regional and global research program of disease burden that assesses mortality and disability from major diseases, injuries, and risk factors. GBD is a collaboration of over 1,800 researchers from 127 countries. Under principal investigator Christopher J.L. Murray, GBD is based out of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Global Burden of Disease Study began in 1990 as a single World Bank-commissioned study, now called GBD 1990. The original project quantified the health effects of more than 100 diseases and injuries for eight regions of the world, giving estimates of morbidity and mortality by age, sex, and region. It also introduced the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) as a new metric to quantify the burden of diseases, injuries, and risk factors, to aid comparisons. GBD 1990 was "institutionalized" at the World Health Organization (WHO) and the research was "conducted mainly by researchers at Harvard and WHO".

In 2000–2002, the 1990 study was updated by WHO to include a more extensive analysis using a framework known as comparative risk factor assessment.

The WHO estimates were again updated for 2004 in The global burden of disease: 2004 update (published in 2008) and in Global health risks (published in 2009).

Official DALY estimates had not been updated by WHO since 2004 until the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010 (GBD 2010), also known as the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010, was published in December 2012. The work quantified the burdens of 291 major causes of death and disability and 67 risk factors disaggregated by 21 geographic regions and various age–sex groups. GBD 2010 had the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation as its coordinating center, but was a collaboration between several institutions including WHO and the Harvard School of Public Health. The work was funded by the Gates Foundation. The GBD 2010 estimates contributed to WHO's own estimates published in 2013, although WHO did not acknowledge the GBD 2010 estimates.

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