Background: Evidence-based policy measures need non-interest-guided information about the health status of a population and the diseases that affect the population the most. In such cases, a national burden of disease study can provide reliable insights at the regional level.
Aim: This article presents the potential of the BURDEN 2020 project and its expected outcome for Germany at the national and regional level.
Methods: The BURDEN 2020 project uses several indicators including years of life lost (YLL) to cover the impact of mortality and years lived with disability (YLD) to cover morbidity. The sum of both is the measure of population health called disability adjusted life years (DALY).
Results: The study ranks individual diseases and risk factors based on their impact on population health. The burden of disease approach is assumed to be sensitive to subnational differences and may generate immediate benefits for regional planning. The BURDEN 2020 study will pilot a national burden of disease study for Germany that will later be transformed into a continuous data processing and visualization tool. This is done by using, modifying and supplementing the methodology employed by the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study to better fit the needs of health policy in Germany. This study is aimed at calculating the disease burden for up to 17 preselected diseases. Furthermore, the estimates of burden of disease are attributed to a selected set of risk factors.
Conclusion: The Burden 2020 study will provide the results of a new, health-related data processing system to the public. This includes a noninterest-guided presentation of the burden of disease (DALY) in Germany at the national and regional level.
Keywords: Burden of disease; Disability adjusted life years; Health policy planning; Non-communicable diseases; Regional prevalence.