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Abstract:
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Over the last decade, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer and chronic pulmonary disease have emerged as the top causes of premature death throughout the world. In order to reduce premature mortality due to non-communicable diseases (NCDs), countries need to plan and prioritize strategies for NCD prevention and control. An important element in the determination of these strategies is the reduction of leading risk factors for NCDs (e.g. tobacco use, alcohol use, salt intake, obesity, raised blood pressure, raised blood glucose and diabetes, and physical inactivity). To complicate matters, since NCDs have multiple causes, combinations of risk factors can lead to different disease rates across countries. Assessment of the combined effects of multiple risks is especially important because many risk factors act through intermediate factors or in combination with others. Multi-causality also affects the identification of competing interventions that can be used for disease prevention. One of the approaches broadly used to evaluate the impact of the risk factors on mortality is the population attributable fraction (PAF). The PAF denotes the reduction in population disease or mortalit
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