MANY PUBLIC HEALTH OFFIcials and organizations have tried to warn the public about the dangers of obesity. One of the strongest warnings came from the US surgeon General who stated that a failure to address overweight and obesity “could wipe out some of the gains we’ve made in areas such as heart disease, several forms of cancer, and other chronic health problems.” For a health message to be ef...

Stroke is a prototype disorder that disables as well as kills people. The disability-adjusted life years (DALY) metric developed by the World Health Organization to measure the global burden of disease integrates healthy life years lost due to both premature mortality and living with disability. Accordingly, it is well suited to stroke research. The DALY has previously been applied only to larg...

BACKGROUND Diabetes, hyperglycemia, and their complications are a growing problem in Brazil. However, no comprehensive picture of this disease burden has yet been presented to date. METHODS We used Global Burden of Disease 2015 data to characterize diabetes prevalence, incidence and risk factors from 1990 to 2015 in Brazil. Additionally, we provide mortality, years of life lost prematurely (Y...

In industrialized countries, acute infectious enteric diseases are usually mild, but they can also cause death. They do so, however, at different ages. Using 2004-2008 German notification data, we computed and compared crude and premature mortality [three different measures of years of potential life lost (YPLL)] of illnesses caused by Campylobacter spp., Listeria monocytogenes, norovirus, rota...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The burden of premature mortality due to opioid-related death has not been fully characterized. We calculated temporal trends in the proportion of deaths attributable to opioids and estimated years of potential life lost (YLL) due to opioid-related mortality in Ontario, Canada. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. SETTING Ontario, Canada. PARTICIPANTS Individuals who died of ...

INTRODUCTION Excessive alcohol consumption is a leading cause of premature mortality in the United States. The objectives of this study were to update national estimates of alcohol-attributable deaths (AAD) and years of potential life lost (YPLL) in the United States, calculate age-adjusted rates of AAD and YPLL in states, assess the contribution of AAD and YPLL to total deaths and YPLL among w...

OBJECTIVES To present evidence to support a higher priority for injury prevention in initiatives, research, and budget allocations. METHODS Recent data (2000) for deaths from injury, infectious disease, heart disease, and cancer from 11 countries in the Region of the Americas were analyzed. Analyses focused on: first, Potentially Productive Years of Life Lost (PPYLL, discounted) from deaths o...

Background & Aims: Traffic accidents are a major cause of disability and mortality around the world and a major public health problem in developing and developed countries. The aim of this study was to assess the burden of road traffic accidents in Isfahan, Iran. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in Isfahan in 2010. Data were collected from death registration system to calculate...