disability-adjusted life years

Definition: a measure of the burden of disease on a defined population, usually that of an entire nation, based on adjustment of life expectancy that allows for long-term disability as estimated from official national statistics; DALYs have been extensively used by the World Health Organization to arrive at rankings of nations according to average national levels of health.

[Developed c.1990 by C.L. Murray and A. Lopez for the Harvard University/WHO Global Burden of Disease study.]

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