Risk factors and their contribution to population health in the European Union (EU-28) countries in 2007 and 2017

João Vasco Santos, Vanessa Gorasso, Júlio Souza, Grant M.A. Wyper, Ian Grant, Vera Pinheiro, João Viana, Walter Ricciardi, Juanita A. Haagsma, Brecht Devleesschauwer, Dietrich Plass, Alberto Freitas

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study has generated a wealth of data on death and disability outcomes in Europe. It is important to identify the disease burden that is attributable to risk factors and, therefore, amenable to interventions. This paper reports the burden attributable to risk factors, in deaths and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), in the 28 European Union (EU) countries, comparing exposure to risks between them, from 2007 to 2017. METHODS: Retrospective descriptive study, using secondary data from the GBD 2017 Results Tool. For the EU-28 and each country, attributable (all-cause) age-standardized death and DALY rates, and summary exposure values are reported. RESULTS: In 2017, behavioural and metabolic risk factors showed a higher attributable burden compared with environmental risks, with tobacco, dietary risks and high systolic blood pressure standing out. While tobacco and air quality improved significantly between 2007 and 2017 in both exposure and attributable burden, others such as childhood maltreatment, drug use or alcohol use did not. Despite significant heterogeneity between EU countries, the EU-28 burden attributable to risk factors decreased in this period. CONCLUSION: Accompanying the improvement of population health in the EU-28, a comparable trend is visible for attributable burden due to risk factors. Besides opportunities for mutual learning across countries with different disease/risk factors patterns, good practices (i.e. tobacco control in Sweden, air pollution mitigation in Finland) might be followed. On the opposite side, some concerning cases must be highlighted (i.e. tobacco in Bulgaria, Latvia and Estonia or drug use in Czech Republic).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)958-967
Number of pages10
JournalEuropean Journal of Public Health
Volume31
Issue number5
Early online date1 Sept 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Oct 2021

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Public Health Association. All rights reserved.

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