1. Describing Metrics

Years of Life Lost(YLL) is defined as an estimate of the average years a person could have lived. YLL is calculated by summing the number of deaths in at a particular age, multiplied by the life expectancy minus the age. YLL = (Life expectancy - age) * deaths.

Years lived with disability(YLD) is the number of years someone lived with health issues in states worse than full health. YLD is calculated by multiplying the number of people live with the health outcome and disability weight. Disability weights are measured on a scale from 0 to 1, with 0 indicating the state of full health and 1 as the state equivalent to death.

Disability Adjusted Life Years(DALYs) measures the number of years lost due to health issues, disability, or early death. It is a great way to measure overall disease burden. DALYs are calculated by adding the number of years lost(YLL) to the number of years lived with disability(YLDs) for a certain disease or health issue.

Disability weights were measured by a household survey and an open access web-based survey. In the first survey, respondents were asked to consider two hypotehical individuals, each with a particular health condition and to state which one out of the two would eem as being healthier than other. The other survey asked respondents to compare the population health benfits in two different hypotheical health programmes.

Age-weighting and Discounting happens when we take age into consideteration when measuring YLL and DALYs. While I believe that age-weighting is important because infants might have a greater YLL than the elderly, ethically, this could imply that one live is more important than the other. Therefore, I think it shouldn’t be included in the calculation of DALYs.

2. Burden by cause

The four charts below demonstrates the Years of Life Lost(YLLs), Years lived with disability(YLD), and Disability Adjusted Life Years(DALYs) of the top 5 causes that lead to most deaths based on the dataset. Insight: While Ischemic heart disease leads to the most death among the 5 causes, it also has the highest YLLs and DALYs. However, it is interesting to see that Ischemic heart disease actually have a relatively low YLDs.

Analysis: Ischemic heart disease’s high YLLs and low YLD contrast leads to my assumption that Ischemic heart disease has a fairly high disability weight(close to 1).

3. Burden by age

The line graph below indicates the overall trends of the number of deaths, Years of Life Lost(YLLs), Years lived with disability(YLD), and Disability Adjusted Life Years(DALYs) of each age group. The green line represents DALYs, red line represents YLLs, orange line represents YLD, and blue line represents number of death. Insight: As shown in the line graph, age group under 5 has the highest DALYs and YLLs among all age groups. It is also interesting to see an immediate decrease in the DALYs and YLLs rates at the age group of 5 to 9, which creates a huge constrast.

Analysis: There is an interesting trend that under age 5 group has high YLLs because new borns are most vulnerable under age 5 and there is a higher death rate. However, after the new borns turn to 5, thier death rate drastically decreases.

4. Burden by sex

The four bar charts in this section indicates the number of death, Years of Life Lost(YLLs), Years lived with disability(YLD), and Disability Adjusted Life Years(DALYs) by sex. Insight: While the number of deaths, the years of life lost, and the disability adjusted life years of female are less than those of male, the years lived with disability rates are very similar among both sex.

Analysis: Males appear to have a higher YLLs and DALYs compared to females. This difference might be due to genetics and job types.For instance, traditionally male takes up higher risk jobs such as construction. Male in general also has a higher suicide rate than female does.