Claire Nyquist

DALYs & NIH Investment

Which diseases receive research funding proportional to their global health burden — and which don't?

This chart plots 30 disease categories by their global burden (disability-adjusted life years) against US National Institutes of Health research investment. Bubble size represents global deaths. Diseases higher up receive more funding per DALY; those lower receive less relative to their burden.

Disease burden (DALYs and deaths) comes from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) Global Burden of Disease Study 2023 (2021 estimates). One DALY represents one lost year of healthy life — either through premature death or living with disability.

NIH funding comes from the NIH Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC) system, FY2023 actual obligations. RCDC uses automated text mining to categorize NIH-funded projects by disease area.

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Global Disease Burden vs. NIH Research Funding

Bubble size represents global deaths

Data Sources

  • Disease burden: Global Burden of Disease Collaborative Network. Global Burden of Disease Study 2023 (GBD 2023) Results. Seattle, United States: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), 2024. Available from vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-results. Data shown: Global, Both sexes, All ages, 2021 estimates. Measures: DALYs (Disability-Adjusted Life Years) and Deaths, Number metric.
  • NIH funding: National Institutes of Health, Office of Budget. Estimates of Funding for Various Research, Condition, and Disease Categories (RCDC). FY2023 Actual Obligations (dollars in millions). Available from report.nih.gov/funding/categorical-spending.
  • Companion paper: GBD 2021 Diseases and Injuries Collaborators. (2024). Global incidence, prevalence, years lived with disability (YLDs), disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), and healthy life expectancy (HALE) for 371 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021. The Lancet, 403(10440), 2133–2161. doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)00757-8

Note: NIH RCDC categories do not map one-to-one with GBD cause categories. RCDC uses automated text mining to assign projects to categories, and a single project can appear under multiple disease areas, so category totals are not mutually exclusive. GBD cause names were matched to the closest RCDC category; the specific RCDC category used for each disease is included in the underlying data file. This visualization is intended to reveal broad patterns in the relationship between disease burden and research investment, not exact ratios.