H.6. Skills building seminar: Understanding, interpreting and calculating Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs)

The Disability-Adjusted Life Year or DALY is a population health metric widely used to quantify burden of disease. DALYs have been the key measure in the four Global Burden of Disease studies, each presenting a comprehensive assessment of the worldwide health impact of disease, injury and risk factors. Furthermore, various national and regional DALY calculations have been performed to assess and monitor local health. As such, the DALY is becoming a key metric in public health. Being able to interpret and calculate DALYs is therefore of paramount importance for public health professionals. In this workshop, we will summarize the DALY's basic features, enabling participants to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the DALY metric. In addition, we will give a hands-on session on DALY calculation in R, a free and open source environment for statistical programming. Key messages The DALY is an increasingly used summary measure of public health This workshop will enable participants to understand, interpret and calculate DALYs