POS-2026-3002: Improving disease burden estimation in England

The Global Burden of Disease study calculates how common different diseases are, and how much disability and economic cost they cause. Knowing this is crucial to planning public services, including the NHS and social care. All statistics are calculated in a standardised manner, which makes them comparable across different timepoints and settings. The 2025 edition of Global Burden of Disease aims to provide up-to-date and more accurate statistics for over 300 different diseases in all regions in England. This will identify the changing patterns of disease and compare differences between geographic, sex and age groups. Such comprehensive data will enable better planning of national, regional and local services and appropriate prioritisation of resources. It will also highlight the changes across time and differences from other countries. We will make our analyses reproducible, so that they can be easily and efficiently repeated regularly. Producing statistics for England’s localities through a national data environment will also offload the work required from already busy NHS commissioners and health analysts, including those working at the local level, such as integrated care boards. Better data can inform better services, equipped to meet the changing needs of the English population.