DALY calculation in practice: a stepwise approach

disability weight ð1Þ YLL 1⁄4 Number of deaths life expectancy at the age of death ð2Þ DALY 1⁄4 YLD þ YLL ð3Þ The philosophical and methodological aspects of the DALY calculation have been described (and debated) in great detail (Murray 1994; Murray and Acharya 1997; for critiques, see, amongst others, Anand and Hanson 1997), and are summarized in the accompanying Hints and Kinks paper (Devleesschauwer et al. 2014). The steps preceding the actual calculation, however, remain less well documented. This Hints and Kinks paper tries to address this gap by presenting a stepwise approach towards a DALY calculation.