who we are

Burden of Disease Unit (BOD)

BoD aims to produce timely, relevant and scientifically valid results on burden of disease in collaboration with national, continental and international collaborators for Ethiopia and Africa at large. We also aim to inform public health policy and practice, track health progress and population health outcomes through quantifying health metrics measurements that include Years of Life Lost (YLL), Years Lived with Disabilities (YLD), Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), health loss attributable to risk factors, life expectancy, health adjusted life expectancy, fertility, socio-demographic index (SDI) and others.

Currently, we are Collaborating in the GBD study at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) of University of Washington, Ministry of Health, 10 Universities in Ethiopia, 9 regional health bureaus and all regional public health institutes, research institutes, and 700 + GBD Ethiopia collaborator experts to achieve our mission. We are providing a comprehensive and comparable national and sub-national burden of disease estimates for nine regional states and two chartered cities, using all available and accessible health and health related data. To do that we used multiple data sources that include census, demographic surveillance, household surveys, diseases registry, health service utilization, disease notification, and other data sources.

Major Activities

Produces a comparable estimate of premature mortality and loss of health resulted from diseases, injuries, and risk factors for national and the subnational states;
Produces a comprehensive national and subnational health estimates on life expectancy and leading causes of death and disability;
Provides the latest and comprehensive estimates on the causes of death and disability on a national and subnational basis;
Estimates and ranks the leading causes of disability-adjusted life years for national subnational states;
Coordinates Ethiopian Burden of Disease’s collaborators, and strengthens the network;
Develops a guiding document to compare health outcomes between subnational states and districts of Ethiopia;

Produces national and subnational health profiles using GBD studies to inform policy makes, health planners and care providers;
Enhances the use of national, subnational and local burden of diseases estimates by stakeholder for decision making;
Track, monitor, and evaluate the progress made towards universal health targets including SDG and HSTP targets;
Develops and standardizes methods and techniques used for estimating national and subnational burden of disease;
Offers technical support and capacity building on BoD analytics and metrics for local, subnational, national, and continental partners