Burden of disease studies in the WHO European Region—a mapping exercise

BACKGROUND: The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) have produced numerous global burden of disease (GBD) estimates since the 1990s, using disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs). Here we attempt to identify studies that have either independent DALY estimates or build on the work of WHO and IHME, for the WHO European Region, categorize them by scope of disease analysis and geographic coverage, and briefly compare their methodology (age weighting, discounting and disability weights). METHODS: Google and Google Scholar were used with the search terms ‘DALY’, ‘national burden of disease’, Member State names and researcher’s names, covering all years. Studies were categorized as: ‘specific’ (fewer than five disease categories or just risk factors for a single country), ‘specific, multicountry’ (fewer than five disease categories or just risk factors for more than one country), ‘extensive’ (covering five or more but not all disease categories for one country), ‘full, sub country’ (covering all relevant disease categories for part of one country) and ‘full, country’ (covering all relevant disease categories for one country). RESULTS: A total of 198 studies were identified: 143 ‘specific’, 26 ‘specific, multicountry’, 7 ‘extensive’, 10 ‘full, sub country’ and 12 ‘full, country’ [England (1), Estonia (2), France (1), Romania (1), Serbia (1), Spain (3), Sweden (2) and Turkey (1)]. About 5 (20%) of the 25 examinable ‘extensive’, ‘full, sub country’ and ‘full, country’ studies calculated DALYs using GBD 2010 methodology. CONCLUSIONS: Independent burden of diseases studies in Europe have been located, and categorized by scope of disease analysis and geographic coverage. Methodological choices varied between independent ‘full, country’ studies.