disability-adjusted life year

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a measure of overall disease burden that quantifies the years of healthy life lost due to illness, disability, and premature death, combining years of life lost to early mortality with years lived with disability weighted by the severity of the health condition; unlike QALYs, which are used to assess the value of specific interventions, DALYs measure the burden of disease in populations and are used by the World Health Organization and the Global Burden of Disease study to compare the health impact of different diseases and risk factors across countries and over time; one DALY represents one year of healthy life lost; DALYs are valuable for prioritising global health investments by revealing which diseases impose the greatest burden on specific populations, particularly in low-income countries where mortality data alone is insufficient