Editorials Bull World Health Organ 2010;88:879 | doi:10.2471/BLT.10.084301

Since its launch in the early 1990s, the global burden of disease study has produced a highly influential set of findings on the impacts of different diseases, injuries and risk factors on population health.1–3 One important contri-bution of the study has been the development of the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) as a new metric for quantifying losses of healthy life, due either to premature mortality or to time lived in a state of reduced health. To account for both types of outcomes in a commensurable way, DALYs require a set of numerical weights attached to the wide array of non-fatal consequences from different dis-eases and injuries. The conceptualization an