Adding years to life: effect of avoidable mortality on life expectancy at birth

Commentary: approaches, strengths, and limitations of avoidable mortality

Publication of recent papers such as the one by Schoenbaum and colleagues entitled 'Mortality Amenable to Health Care in the United States: The Roles of Demographics and Health Systems Performance' has stimulated this commentary. We discuss strengths and limitations of amenable and avoidable mortality in health-care systems' performance and their contribution to health inequalities. To illustrate, we present a case study of avoidable and amenable mortality in Spain over 27 years. We conclude that amenable mortality is not a good indicator of health-care systems' performance, or for determining whether it could give rise to health inequalities. To understand health problems and to assess the impact of interventions affecting health requires good, basic, and routine monitoring of health indicators and of socioeconomic determinants of health.

Burden of disease assessment with summary measures of population health for the Region of Valencia, Spain: a population-based study

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

An important input to decision-making and health planning is a consistent and comparative description of the population health status. The purpose of this study was to describe the burden of disease in the Region of Valencia (Spain).

MATERIAL AND METHODS

Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) were calculated and divided into years of life lost (YLLs) and years lived with disability (YLDs). Using death registry data and Valencian population estimates in 2008, we calculated the number of deaths and YLLs. YLDs were based on age- and sex-specific data for countries of the EURO-A subregional level (which includes the Region of Valencia) from the Global Burden of Disease study. The results were stratified by age group, sex and underlying cause of death. The DALY values were used to rank the leading conditions of disease burden.

RESULTS

In 2008, the total number of DALYs lost was about 551 thousands (53% in men). The main categories of DALYs lost were neuropsychiatric conditions (30%; 167 thousands), malignant tumors (15%; 85 thousands), cardiovascular diseases (13%; 72 thousands) and sense organ diseases (8%; 46 thousands). Depression (8% of DALYs; 47 thousands), dementias (8%; 42 thousands), ischaemic heart disease (5%; 27 thousands), hearing loss (4%; 22 thousands), stroke (4%; 20 thousands) and lung cancer (3%; 19 thousands) were the leading specific causes of disease burden.

CONCLUSIONS

We provide for the first time ever information on the burden of disease in the Valencian population. At this local level, the use of DALYs can help to monitor the population health status and guide the debates on rational priority-setting.

The impact of avoidable mortality on life expectancy at birth in Spain: changes between three periods, from 1987 to 2001

Objective:

To evaluate the impact of avoidable mortality on the changes in life expectancy at birth in Spain.

Methods:

Standard life table techniques and the Arriaga method were used to calculate and to decompose life expectancy (LE) changes by age, effects and groups of causes of avoidable mortality among three periods (1987–91, 1992–6 and 1997–2001). A list of causes of avoidable mortality reached by consensus and previously published in Spain was used.

Main results:

Life expectancy increased in all ages and both sexes. The main contribution to the increase of LE at birth was due to people over 50. Mortality in young adults produced a reduction in LE between the first two periods, but there was an important increase in LE between the last two periods; in both cases, this was the result of factors amenable to health policy interventions. The highest improvement in LE was due to non-avoidable causes, but avoidable mortality through health service interventions showed improvements in LE in those younger than 1 year and in those aged 45–75 years.

Conclusions:

Making a distinction between several groups of causes of avoidable mortality and using decomposition by causes, ages and effects allowed us to better explain the impact of avoidable mortality on the LE of the whole population and gave a new dimension to this indicator that could be very useful in public health.