Disability Weights Estimates From India in 2018: Measurements From Community Members From Two Distinct States of India

BACKGROUND: India is undergoing a rapid demographic and epidemiologic transition. Thus demanding prioritization of diseases based on burden estimation is befitting our cultural diversity. Disability weights (DWs) by Global burden of disease (GBD) studies may not be representative. Hence, a study was conducted to estimate state-specific disability weights to capture the community health perceptions that included urban–rural settings as well as different socio-economic and literacy levels. METHODS: A total of 2,055 community members (participants) from two distinct states of India, Odisha and Telangana, were interviewed to assign disability weights to the selected 14 health states based on the state burden and relevance. Each health state was described to the participants using pictorial representations of the health states and valuated using visual analog scale and card sort methods. RESULTS: We noted that DWs in Odisha ranged from 0.32 (0.30–0.34) for upper limb fracture due to road traffic accident (least severe) to 0.90 (0.88–0.93) for breast cancer (most severe) among the 14 health states. While, in Telangana, diarrhea was considered least severe [DW = 0.22 (0.19–0.24)] and breast cancer remained most severe [DW = 0.85 (0.83–0.88)] as in Odisha. Marked difference in the DWs for other health states was also seen. Further, on comparison of community weights with GBD weights using Spearman correlation, we observed a low correlation (ρ = 0.104). CONCLUSION: Our study provides community-based findings that show how participants valued noncommunicable diseases higher than short-term ailments or infectious diseases. Additionally, the low correlation between GBD also suggests the need for local disability weights rather than universal acceptance. We therefore recommend that decisions in policy-making, especially for resource allocation and priority setting, need to be based not only on expert opinion but also include community in accordance with high scientific standards.