Introduction

There is a generalized idea that countries like the US and in Europe have a higher ability to address health related issues based on them having a higher GDP. I would like to bring into question whether this idea is statistically significant? As well as assess the overall changes in affect of risk of disease across continents and within the US.
The Global Burden of Disease Study 2021 (GBD 2021), coordinated by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), estimated the burden of diseases, injuries, and risk factors for 204 countries and territories and selected subnational locations.
To produce the estimated mean value, the Socio-demographic Index (SDI) was used. SDI is a composite indicator of development status strongly correlated with health outcomes. A location with an SDI of 0 would have a theoretical minimum level of development relevant to health, while a location with an SDI of 1 would have a theoretical maximum level.
This dataset provides SDI values for all estimated GBD 2021 locations for 1950–2021.

1. The Global Increase in Resistance to Disease

Continents were defined based on 198 countries’ burden of disease and year ID. An analysis of resistance to disease, the inverse of burden of disease, revealed that Europe had significantly higher resistance to disease and Africa had significantly lower resistance to disease as compared to Asia, North American, South America, and Oceania which all had similar values. All continents have an increasing resistance to disease that changes at a consistent rate over 70 years and across all continents.
Europe’s resistance to disease is in line with the idea that a higher GDP will result in higher resistance to disease, North America is not despite also having a high GDP.

2. Continental Resistance to Disease by Decade

In agreement with the previous graph, this table shows the most recent decade has the highest resistance to disease as compared across all continents. These values highlight the similarities in resistance to disease between Asia, North American, South America, and Oceania. In the next section, we focus on the United States.

continent 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s+
South America 0.34 0.38 0.44 0.49 0.53 0.58 0.64
Oceania 0.33 0.37 0.42 0.48 0.52 0.56 0.61
Europe 0.55 0.58 0.63 0.68 0.72 0.77 0.81
North America 0.31 0.34 0.41 0.48 0.53 0.59 0.65
Africa 0.15 0.17 0.22 0.27 0.32 0.36 0.43
Asia 0.27 0.31 0.37 0.44 0.50 0.56 0.63

3. Resistance to Disease in the United States

Looking at the trend line of the United States resistance to disease by year, it is consistent with the expected trend based on overall continental resistance to disease. With the exception of the 1950-1960 range in which we see a significant decline in resistance to disease, indicating an extreme burden of disease in that time range.
Given the background that this time frame included multiple polio epidemics before the vaccine was developed in 1955, it is understandable the decline in resistance to disease.

4. Resistance to Disease in the United States by State

When looking at a map of resistance to disease in the United States, states that have been determined to have good healthcare and public health are also projected to have high resistance to burden of disease. Massechusets, Connecticut, and California have the highest estimated resistance to disease indicated by a deeper blue.

Conclusion

Analysis shows significant differences of values for resistance to disease across continents, but similar changes over a 70 year time frame. Analysis of the US shows an overall increase in resistance to disease with the exception of an about 10 year span that is likely due to epidemics that occurred within that time frame. Analysis of the US also shows that generally higher income states with better healthcare and public health have a higher resistance to disease.

Works Cited

Global Burden of Disease Collaborative Network. Global Burden of Disease Study 2021 (GBD 2021) Socio-Demographic Index (SDI) 1950–2021. Seattle, United States of America: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), 2024.

List of countries by continents. (2024, September 27). Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_countries_by_continents&oldid=9793469.