The Week in Charts

Shaping a healthier world

Public Health
Healthcare
Pharmaceuticals & Medical Products

Demographic shifts over the past 25 years have reshaped global health and are expected to accelerate over the next 25. All this week, we explore how health trends will likely evolve due to aging populations and the interventions that could reduce disease burden worldwide.

Over the past 25 years, profound demographic shifts have reshaped global health—and those changes are expected to accelerate over the next 25. McKinsey Health Institute examined the potential impact of approximately 300 interventions, encompassing about 85 percent of the global disease burden. The analysis shows that by 2050, scaling these interventions globally to an aspirational best-practice adoption level could reduce total disease burden by 35 percent, preventing 33 million premature deaths and averting more than 461 million years lived with disability annually. This represents a significant bending of the global disease burden curve, decreasing premature mortality and enhancing quality of life across diverse populations, note McKinsey’s Alex Beauvais, Brad Herbig, Matt Wilson, and Pooja Kumar.

There is an opportunity to bend the disease burden curve.
Image description: A line chart shows the projected global disease burden from 2025 to 2050, measured in billions of disability-adjusted life years. Two trajectories are displayed: a business-as-usual scenario that remains relatively flat, rising slightly from ~2.7 billion to ~3.1 billion DALYs, and an investing-in-health scenario that declines from ~2.7 billion to ~2.0 billion DALYs. The vertical gap between the 2 trajectories in 2050 represents a 35% reduction in disease burden through scaling access to known health interventions. The chart includes a footnote explaining that it includes approximately 300 proven cost-effective interventions based on WHO definitions and McKinsey Health Institute analysis. Note: This image description was completed with the assistance of Writer, a gen AI tool. Source: Global Burden of Disease Database, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, 2021 (used with permission, all rights reserved); literature review of intervention efficacy and adoption across 500+ papers, including Lancet and Cochrane reviews; McKinsey Health Institute Prioritizing Health Model. End of image description.

To read the report, see “The health of nations: Stronger health, stronger economies,” February 17, 2026.