Understanding the levels and trends of major risks for human health is essential to prioritise public health action and evaluate the success of different programmes and policies. This study provides a comprehensive and comparable assessment of 84 metabolic, environmental, occupational, and behavioural risks across locations and time. Our findings show that risk modification has been an important contributor to reductions in communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional causes, but has played a relatively small part in trends in NCDs. Conflicting trends in risks for NCDs at the global level, such as the decline in smoking prevalence coupled with the rise in obesity, FPG, and SBP, account for this finding. By contrast with trends in diseases and injuries at the global level and even at the national level, there is much greater heterogeneity of global trends across risks and considerable geographical variation in leading risks as well. Public health action in each country and region needs to focus on the major risks in that community. Our findings reinforce the crucial need for robust monitoring of the exposure to risks to health and
