5.H. Skills building seminar: Methodological choices in burden of disease studies: a literature review of European studies
Authors:   Organised by: COST Action CA18218–European Burden of Disease Network,   Chair persons: Brecht Devleesschauwer (Belgium), Juanita Haagsma (Netherlands)
Published: October 2021

Abstract

Since the first Global Burden of Disease (GBD), the burden of disease (BoD) concept has been widely used to understand patterns of health and the causes of loss of health in populations. In particular, the use of Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) has become popular as a single numerical index representative of both morbidity and mortality. Over the years, the original GBD methodology has undergone numerous updates, and various weighting and discounting schemes have been used in the reporting of the result. In addition to the GBD estimates (produced by the World Health Organization and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation), many other independent studies have been conducted with considerable variation in the use of discounting, age weighting, disability weights, reference life tables, incidence or prevalence measures, and in the use of methods handling missing or poorly coded mortality data. The European BoD network (COST Action CA18218) strives to integrate and strengthen the capacity and knowledge in BoD assessment across Europe and beyond. Within this context, a series of systematic literature reviews (SLR) was performed to explore key methodological choices and differences of European BoD studies. The reviews aimed to i) identify existing BoD studies; ii) provide an overview of the specific methodological choices for calculating disease burden; and iii) synthesize the current scope and quality of BoD assessments across Europe. The ultimate aim of the literature summary is to develop a checklist for BoD studies that used DALYs. Since the review has been a continuing collaboration with a large group of members who are part of the European BoD network (burden-eu), this workshop represents an opportunity to enlarge that collaboration. Within the workshop, we will first present our aims and objectives and SLR procedures. After having presented some preliminary results, we will offer some starting points for a discussion on the implications of our findings. In particular, the presentations will be structured as follows:
Methods and preliminary results of the SLR focusing on non-communicable diseases, communicable diseases, and injuries; Methods and preliminary results of the SLR focusing risk factors; Discussion on the implications for researchers.
The workshop is meant to be an occasion to share experiences on computational variations within BoD studies and to collect input for the quality and scope evaluation of the studies.

Key messages
Shedding light on methodological approaches and data sources that have been used over the years across European countries should help to evaluate effectively the comparability of the results. The development and use of key standardized guidelines for reporting BoD methodological choices may help decision-makers to draw national-level strategies based on more accessible BoD estimates.