■ Abstract Transition frameworks are used to envision the important changes that occur during economic development from poor to middle-income or rich countries. We explain the derivation of and use data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) and Comparative Risk Assessment (CRA) projects of the World Health Organization (WHO) to explore the classic epidemiologic transition framework, which des...

Over the past centuries, mortality and morbidity patterns have been changing all over the world albeit with variations in timing and pace. These changes have been referred to as the epidemiologic transition (Omran 1971, 1982). The main features of the transition include a decline in mortality, an increase in life expectancy, and a shift in the leading causes of morbidity and mortality from infe...

The relative weights of empirical facts (data) and assumptions (theory) in causal inference vary across disciplines. Typically, disciplines that ask more complex questions tend to better tolerate a greater role of theory and modeling in causal inference. As epidemiologists move toward increasingly complex questions, Marshall and Galea (Am J Epidemiol. 2015;181(2):92-99) support a reweighting of...