Quantification of the disease burden attributable to environmental risk factors

Overview

WHO has developed a methodology to evaluate the global burden of disease and to quantify the health state of a population in order to determine strategic planning and set priority actions in public health. Therefore, summary measures of population health (SMPH) were developed, that combine information on mortality and non-fatal health outcomes. The SMPH can be divided in two distinct categories: the health expectancies and the health gap measures (WHO 2002a).