Burden of disease analysis is the best measure of the impact of different diseases or injuries on a population. It combines the years of healthy life lost due to living with ill health (non-fatal burden) with the years of life lost due to dying prematurely (fatal burden). Fatal and non-fatal burden combined are referred to as total burden, reported using the disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) measure.
In 2015, Australians lost 4.8 million years of healthy life (DALY) due to illness or premature death. This is equivalent to 199 DALY per 1,000 population.
Half of this burden was non-fatal (50%); that is, from living with the impacts of disease and injury. Males experienced more burden, losing around 289,000 more years of healthy life in 2015 than females.
What is burden of disease?
Burden of disease analysis quantifies the gap between a population’s actual health and an ideal level of health—that is, every individual living without disease or injury to the theoretical maximum life span—in a given year.
Burden of disease is measured using the summary measure disability-adjusted life years (DALYs).
One DALY is 1 year of ‘healthy life’ lost due to illness (non-fatal burden, Years Lived with Disability) and/or death (fatal burden, Years of Life Lost)—the more DALYs associated with a disease or injury, the greater the burden. The total disease burden is the sum of all DALYs (burden) estimated for all diseases and injuries in the year of study for the whole population.
The attributable burden reflects the direct relationship between a risk factor (for example, overweight and obesity) and a disease outcome. It is the amount of burden that could be avoided if the risk factor were removed or reduced to the lowest possible exposure.
The Australian Burden of Disease Study (ABDS) 2015 provides burden of disease estimates for 216 diseases/injuries and 38 risk factors in Australia, at the national level and for various population groups. Details on the methods used to calculate burden of disease in the Australian Study are in the AIHW report Australian Burden of Disease Study: methods and supplementary material 2015 (AIHW 2019c).
All data presented are from the ABDS 2015 (AIHW 2019a, 2019b).
What are the leading causes of burden?
The disease groups causing the most burden (DALY) in 2015 were cancer (18% of the total burden), cardiovascular diseases (14%), musculoskeletal conditions (13%), mental & substance use disorders (12%) and injuries (8.5%) (Figure 1). Together, they accounted for around two-thirds of the total burden in Australia.
Males and females experienced the majority of their burden from the same disease groups. However, cancer, cardiovascular diseases and injuries accounted for a greater proportion of the total burden in males, while musculoskeletal and neurological conditions accounted for more of the total burden in females (Figure 1).