Assessing Global Health, One 📈 at a Time

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation website is a treasure trove of data. On a semi-regular basis, the institute publishes data visualizations using the daily freely available on the website.

While the data is “freely available” on the charts, most of it isn’t downloadable or “unlocked” as such. By re-plotting it in Plotly, we “free the data,” so to speak, opening it up to future investigation as other users can easily download it, play with it, and explore it.

In this post, we present five charts that speak volumes about the state of health around the globe, examining in particular key areas such as healthy life expectancy, the prevalence of overweight adults, smoking prevalence, high-risk drinking prevalence, and deaths in the United States.

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1. Healthy Life Expectancy

Did you know? With an average healthy life expectancy (HLE) of nearly 74 years, Japan leads the world. On the flip side, the Kingdom of Lesotho, a landlocked country in southern Africa, holds the distinction for having the globe’s lowest average HLE at 41.19 years.

Iceland has the 2nd highest average HLE at 72.95 years and the Central African Republic the 2nd lowest at 43.19 years.

2. The Prevalence of Overweight Adults

Kuwait holds the distinction of having the highest prevalence (79%) of overweight adults in the world (BMI ≥ 25 for adults aged 20+). The overweight and obesity epidemic has been investigated in this journal article.

Despite this, Kuwait sports a fairly average HLE of 69.56 years.

Egypt also has a near-global high prevalence of overweight adults at 70.9%. Perhaps this high value can be attributed to a high carbohydrate and calorie diet, as speculated about by The Guardian.

To the contrary, Burundi in south central Africa, has the lowest prevalence of overweight adults at 6.3%.

2a. The Prevalence of Overweight Adults vs Healthy Life Expectancy

China and the U.S. have very nearly the same HLE, but being overweight is 38% more prevalent in the states. Meanwhile, the Philippines has an overweight prevalence of 26.9% but an HLE of just 62.05 years.

HLE is likely more closely linked to things like local conditions, reliable access to healthcare, and nutrition than it is to being overweight.

3. Daily Smoking Prevalence

At 45.6%, Greenland has the highest prevalence of smokers in the world. 14% less prevalent than Greenland, Macedonia has the second most smokers.

Meanwhile, smoking is least prevalent in Panama, with only 3.5% of the population identifying as smokers. A smoker in Panama would have to spend 13.1% the of national median income to purchase 10 of the cheapest cigarettes to smoke each day.

3a. Daily Smoking Prevalence vs Healthy Life Expectancy

India has a daily smoking prevalence of 9.8% while Greece is sky high at 31.2%. Despite this, India has an HLE of 58.12 years and Greece 71.13.

4. High Risk Alcohol Consumption

Belarus in Eastern Europe is home to the world’s heaviest drinkers. High risk alcohol consumption is pegged at 28.7%. It is speculated that 80% of murders and grave injuries in Belarus are committed under the influence of alcohol. Only 11% of Belarusians completely abstain from alcohol.

Mauritania in western Africa has the distinction of having the least prevalent amount of high-risk drinkers — this is because it is a dry country.

4a. High Risk Alcohol Consumption vs Healthy Life Expectancy

It likely isn’t a coincidence that the three countries where high risk drinking is most prevalent (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus) are not setting healthy life expectancy records.

5. Deaths by State

Prevalence of all-cause death in the U.S. is highest across the mid-south, Southeast, and Appalachia. It is interesting that the region is well aligned with the CDC-identified diabetes belt. Within the diabetes belt, 11.7% of the people have diagnosed diabetes. Outside the belt, 8.5% have diagnosed diabetes.

6. Crossfilter

Crossfilter is a visual analysis technique for multidimensional data that can help clarify correlations between dimensions.

To use crossfilter, simply click-and-drag on any of the charts and maps in this dashboard. Data sharing common rows between the charts will highlight in red, helping pinpoint complex relationships between various health indicators and locations on the globe.

Crossfilter in action. Link to dashboard.

You can learn more about crossfilter and try it for yourself here.

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