Sök artiklar i SveMed+

Tidskrift

Sammanfattning

The contribution of risk factors to the burden of disease in Sweden For policies and strategies to improve population health it is important to know the contribution of various risk factors to the overall burden of disease. Comparative Risk Assessment (CRA) project is part of WHO:s Global Burden of Disease project which aims at determining the role of selected risk factors to the total burden of disease. We used WHO:s method within the CRA project to evaluate the contribution of these risk factors to the burden of disease in Sweden, 2002. In addition, for a number of risk factors we substituted WHO:s data for Europe with Swedish data in order to update the current existing estimates. High blood pressure, tobacco, high cholesterol and high BMI were the 4 risk factors that most contributed to the burden of disease. Men had in average about 15% higher portion of disease burden associated with these risk factors than women. There were no major differences between WHO data and Swedish data with respect to high BMI, physical inactivity, tobacco and alcohol. On the other hand data from Sweden showed a lower prevalence of fruit and vegetable intake in comparison to WHO data, which resulted in a higher burden of disease. It was found easy to evaluate changes in population health that resulting from distribution of exposure to a risk factor using the CRA model. However, country specific data should be used in these evaluations. Furthermore, the CRA project should expand to include other risk factors such as socioeconomic determinants to provide a more comprehensive view of the contribution by the risk factors to the burden of disease.

MeSH