GIS29 Geography, Migration, Development And Disease Burden Flashcards
Disease burden
**Assessing health impact of a disease **quantitatively at ***population level
Potential uses:
- compare ***disease burden over time / between places / and person
- compare ***health losses due to different risk factors / disease states
- identify ***priority actions
- estimate Clinical / ***cost-effectiveness of interventions
- guide ***policies and strategies adoption and implementation
Measuring health events
- Fatal events
- mortality - Non-fatal events
- hospital care
- primary care - Summary measure of both
- Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs)
- Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs)
Measuring mortality
- Mortality rate
- Number of deaths in a population, scaled to the size of that population, ***per unit of time
- e.g. deaths per 1000 individuals per year - Crude death rate
- Total number of deaths per year per 1000 population at risk of dying in the middle of the year
- Without considering cause of death
- Overall impression in a single figure
Specific / stratified mortality rates
- Sub-population specific rates
- Age-specific
- Sex-specific
- rate of death occurring **in a subgroup of the population
- used when crude rate inadequate to describe **conditions having different load in population subgroups - Cause/ disease-specific
- death rate for a ***specific cause of death
Standardised rates
- Age / sex standardised rate
- Take account of the **different age / sex structures of 2 populations
—> eliminate effect of the characteristic being standardised
—> factors being standardised can no longer be used to explain variations
- Allow for **direct comparison of mortality experience across different geographical areas / over time - Direct standardisation
- a common age-structured population —> observe the rate - Indirect standardisation
- a common set of age-specific rates —> observe the population
Measures of morbidity
- Health care utilisation data
- hospital-based data
- primary care data - Surveillance data
- ILI-surveillance systems - Registration of disease
- Cancer registry - Population-based health information
- General household survey / local health surveys
Problems of traditional assessments of the number of disease burden
Measured either
- the number of deaths
- the amount of suffering (impaired QOL) due to disease incidence
- but NOT both
Make it difficult to compare:
- losses that **occur at different ages
- conditions having **differential impact on length / QOL
—> some conditions do not markedly shorten life but reduce QOL
—> some conditions do shorten life but also reduce QOL
Examples of inadequacy of traditional health indicators
- death at age 20 years vs death at age 70 years
- 200 acute respiratory infections vs 400 cases of infectious diarrhoea
- cancer treatment resulting in an average survival of 10 years compared to untreated average survival of 2 years = gain of 8 whole years of life per person treated?
Other health indicators
- Focusing on either mortality / morbidity
—> Life expectancy - Combining data on mortality and non-fatal outcomes into a single number
—> Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs)
—> Quality-adjusted life year (QALY)
—> Disability-adjusted life expectancy (DALE)
—> Healthy life year (HeaLY)
Life expectancy
Life expectancy:
- Average no. of years an individual of a given age is expected to live if current mortality rates continue to apply
—> a statistical abstraction based on existing age-specific death rates (assuming mortality at each age remains constant in the future)
—> a hypothetical measure and indicator of current health and mortality condition
Life expectancy at birth:
- average no. of years a newborn baby can be expected to live
- average no. of years to be lived by a group of people born in the same year
- a measure of overall QOL in a country and summarises mortality at all ages
Life expectancy at a given age:
- average no. of ADDITIONAL years a person of age X will live, based on the age-specific death rates for a given year if current mortality trends continue to apply
Relationship between life expectancy and GDP
↑ GDP —> ↑ life expectancy
***Quality-adjusted life year (QALY)
Adjust life years for QOL
—> a single measurement of changes in QOL relative to a state of perfect wellbeing (valued as unity)
***QALY = Life years x Quality of life weight(0-1)
QOL: pain / mood / self-care ability / social activities / household activities / paid employment
Uses:
- comparison of clinical and cost-effectiveness of different interventions (pharmaceuticals, procedures, programmes)
- adopted by NICE in UK
Problems:
- theoretical and practical difficulties of deriving valid indices of QOL
- reservation regarding the fairness and appropriateness for using as a basis for assessing / determining health needs
***Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs)
- summary measure of population health by combining mortality and disability
- combines in one measure:
—> Time lost due to premature mortality + Time lost due to disability
—> “Time” (years) lost as the unit of measurement
—> measures Health Gap: relative to an “ideal” life expectancy (80 years for men and 82.5 years for women)
***DALY = YLL + YLD
YLL: years of life lost due to premature mortality
YLD: years of life lost due to disability
***YLL: years of life lost due to premature mortality
YLL, for a given cause, age, sex:
***YLL = N x L
N: no. of deaths
L: standard life expectancy at age of death (in years)
***YLD: years of life lost due to disability
***YLD = I x L x DW
YLD: years lived with disability
I: no. of incident disability cases
DW: disability weight (reflect severity of disease on a scale 0 (perfect health) to 1 (dead))
L: average duration of disability (years)