Overview

Burden of disease measures the gap between a population’s actual health and the ‘ideal’, where everyone lives in full health to an ideal age. It combines health loss from living with illness and injury (non-fatal burden, or YLD) and dying prematurely (fatal burden, or YLL) to estimate total health loss (total burden, or DALY).

1 DALY is equivalent to 1 year of healthy life lost.

The Australian Burden of Disease Study 2015 provides the most recent Australian-specific estimates of disease burden in Australia. Estimates are available by age and sex for 17 disease groups, 203 diseases and injuries and for selected population groups (state/territory, remoteness areas, and socioeconomic group). In addition, changes between the years 2003, 2011 and 2015 can be explored.

Estimates for 2011 and 2003 from the ABDS 2015 replace the estimates for these years in the ABDS 2011. Estimates in the two studies (ABDS 2011 and ABDS 2015) differ due to updates in disease-specific methodology.

Data visualisations displaying estimates of disease burden due to various risk factors are available in the interactive web report: Interactive data on risk factor burden.

What is included in the interactive burden of disease data visualisations?

The Australian Burden of Disease Study 2015 data visualisation tool includes estimates of total, non-fatal and fatal burden, as well as deaths for:

  • Australia in the years 2003, 2011 and 2015
  • States and territories for 2011 and 2015
  • Remoteness area and socioeconomic group for 2011 and 2015
  • Comparisons between years
  • Information about the quality of data and methods used to generate estimates
  • Frequently asked questions on methods, data sources and definitions.

Further information to assist interpretation of the results is shown when hovering over the information icons.