Are women disfavoured in the estimation of Disability Adjusted Life Years and the Global Burden of Disease?

Abstract

Addressing women's health goes beyond merely producing gender-disaggregated data. A women's perspective on health issues involves an analysis based on knowledge of broader gender differences than those that can be attributed to biology alone. Women and men live different lives. It is therefore important to evaluate whether women's health issues are disfavoured by known health burden estimators in general use. The Global Burden of Disease and Disability Adjusted Life Years framework was presented to the public health community by the World Bank in 1993. The data presented are applied for the year 1990. The estimators have been criticized for not being able to address social inequity within populations, and for failure to predict how serious the HIV/AIDS epidemic would be. Some of the critical voices have also centred around how the methodology will affect the way women's health priorities are incorporated; however, the debate is still in its infancy. This paper examines this new concept of measuring health burdens from a women's health perspective.