Workshop: Quantifying burden of disease to support public health policy: exchange of views and experiences

Abstract

Abstract Information on disease burden, risk factors, related healthcare costs and their variations over time represents a major concern for public health decision makers. These data could contribute to define priorities and strategies, to allocate resources and to evaluate health policies and interventions at regional and national levels. In this context, the use and synthesis of all available data is essential, whether these data were collected for the purpose of epidemiological surveillance, healthcare, research, and/or reimbursement. This process raises conceptual and methodological issues. The question of the use of these data by decision-makers is also essential and depends not only on their validity, but also on their credibility, their usability, and their capacity to respond to needs in the context of decision. There are now national experiences of production and use of these data. There are also international collaborations. In particular, the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study is an extremely structured process with extensive global collaboration. The aim of this workshop is to exchange and share experiences on the different approaches, indicators, methods used in order to quantify the burden of disease; the use of health insurance databases as a source of data for quantifying burden of disease; the use of burden of disease information by public health decision-makers at national and local levels. Key messages Disease burden statistics are a resource for data-informed policy-making. Health insurance databases are a complementary source for quantifying disease burden.