The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors 2010 Study (GBD 2010) is the single largest and most detailed scientific effort ever conducted to quantify levels and trends in health. Led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, it was truly a global effort with 488 authors from 50 countries, including 26 low- and middle-income countries.

We contributed substantially to the expert group on Household Air Pollution of the GBD/CRA study and assisted with the risk assessments on ambient air pollution and secondhand tobacco smoke. The following are some of our publications that have come from this set of activities.

Lim S.S and many others (including KR Smith), 2012, A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990-2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010, Lancet, 380: 2224-60.
Balakrishnan K, Ghosh S, Ganguli B, Sambandam S, Bruce NG, Barnes DF, Smith KR. (2013) State and national household concentrations of PM2.5 from solid cookfuel use: Results from measurements and modeling in India for estimation of the global burden of disease. Environmental Health 2013, 12:77 doi:10.1186/1476-069X-12-77
Burnett RT, Pope CA, Ezzati M, Olives C, Lim SS, Mehta S, Shin HH, Singh G, Hubbell B, Brauer M, Anderson HR, Smith KR, Balmes JR, Bruce NG, Kan H, Laden F, Prüss-Ustün A, Turner MC, Gapstur SM, Diver WR, Cohen A (2014). An Integrated Risk Function for Estimating the Global Burden of Disease Attributable to Ambient Fine Particulate Matter Exposure. Environ Health Perspect; DOI:10.1289/ehp.1307049
Smith KR, Bruce N, Balakrishnan K, Adair-Rohani H, Balmes J, Chafe Z, Dherani M, Hosgood DH, Mehta S, Pope D, Rehfuess E, et al. (2014) Millions Dead: How Do We Know and What Does It Mean? Methods Used in the Comparative Risk Assessment of Household Air Pollution. Annu. Rev. Public Health 35: 185-206. doi: 10.1146/annurev-publhealth-032013-182356

GBD 2010 creates a unique platform to compare the magnitude of diseases, injuries, and risk factors across age groups, sexes, countries, regions, and time. For decision-makers, health sector leaders, researchers, and informed citizens, the GBD approach provides an opportunity to compare their countries’ health progress to that of other countries, and to understand the leading causes of health loss that could potentially be avoided, like high blood pressure, smoking, and household air pollution.

IHME provides results from GBD 2010 in visualization tools, allowing people to interact with the vast amounts of data and the trends they identify. These unique tools are beneficial when trying to identify specific information for age groups, sexes, causes, risks, and comparison to other regions.

For more information about GBD, visit the project page.

For more information about CRA, click here.

To read about the findings from GBD 2010, view the publication summaries or download individual country profiles.

To interact with the results data and explore the findings, visit the data visualizations.

IHME published a plain-language overview of GBD 2010 in March 2013: The Global Burden of Disease: Generating Evidence, Guiding Policy.