Global Health Epidemiology: Contemporary Issues and Methodological Challenges in Understanding and Tackling the Inequitable Burden of NCDs

Epidemiology constitutes a core dimension of global health in understanding and addressing the underlying social, economic, environmental, ecological, commercial, and political determinants of health, in order to improve health and achieve equity in health for all people worldwide. Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) represent an emerging global health threat that carries significant morbidity and mortality risks for patients, heavy burdens for caregivers, and substantial costs to health systems and broader society. In this chapter, we highlight the importance and future of global health epidemiology in addressing this priority area, including discussion of contemporary issues and methodological priority areas. These contemporary issues include the growing burden of NCDs in the context of global demographic, economic, and social drivers, the challenges of multi-morbidity, and inequities within and between countries. Methodological challenges and priorities are also discussed, including the adoption of life course approaches, partnering with patients, caregivers, and communities, the challenges of data gaps and the need to move toward data equity, the importance of systems thinking and cross-disciplinary work, and the need to broaden the scope of epidemiological methods and research questions to ensure that global health epidemiology informs action. To achieve long-term and sustainable progress on NCDs as one of the most pressing global health issues, it is essential to adopt methodological innovations that enable identification of solutions to deal effectively with the “causes of the causes” of ill health and health inequities and foster strong partnerships across disciplines and with patients, caregivers, communities, and other stakeholders.