Background: Sub-national figures providing information about the wealth of the population are useful in defining the spatial distribution of both economic activity and poverty within any given country. Furthermore, since several health indicators such as life expectancy are highly correlated...

Armed conflict is a major cause of injury and death worldwide, but we need much better methods of quantification before we can accurately assess its effect.Armed conflict between warring states and groups within states have been major causes of ill health and mortality for most of human history....

Rationale: Self-rated general health (SRGH) is commonly used in surveys to assess overall health status at the national and sub-national levels, particularly in the absence of more expensive measured tests. However, the validity and comparability of SRGH as a global health measure have been...

There is wide agreement that existing approaches to valuing noneconomic losses from personal injury lack coherence. We and others have previously noted the considerable potential for “health utility” measurement — an approach developed in health economics for valuing health outcomes in...

Studdert et al examine why making compensation of noneconomic damages in personal-injury litigation more rational and predictable is socially valuable. Noneconomic-damages schedules as an alternative to caps are discussed, several potential approaches to construction of schedules are reviewed,...

Obesity has risen dramatically in the past few decades. However, the relative contribution of energy intake and energy expenditure to rising obesity is not known. Moreover, the extent to which social and economic factors tip the energy balance is not well understood. In this longitudinal...