and effect of GBD 2010 and to encourage greater use of these visualisations, further training and dissemination will be essential. Short videos on how to use them will be available online. Detailed training workshops on GBD methods will be held, beginning in May, 2013. Planned future revisions of the GBD will hopefully draw on a much more extensive network of scientists. This extended network will not only improve the quality of assessment, but will also provide a forum for continuing reflection, learning, interpretation, and action based on GBD 2010 results and future revisions. A broader understanding of GBD methods and access to national results will enable the growing number of countries with an expressed interest to undertake subnational burden of disease assessments. Global and regional descriptions of leading causes of mortality and disease burden, and how they are changing, serve an important policy need, particularly for donors and policy makers looking to accelerate progress with key global health and development goals. Local policy will be much better served by, and will probably be much more responsive to, local evidence about major causes of health loss in populations. For this reason, the release of the national burden of disease estimates is expected to encourage and focus national policy responses to address leading health challenges in each country. We now have the evidence base to identify these challenges by age group, for males and females separately, for 291 causes of death and disability, and for most leading health risks. The challenge for national policy dialogue will be to make the most of this evidence to improve the health of individuals and populations.