Abstract Background The Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY) is a measure to prioritize in the public health field. In the Netherlands, the DALY estimates are calculated since 1997 and are included in the Public Health Status and Foresight studies which is an input for public health priority setting and policy making. Over these 20 years, methodological advancements have been made, including accounting for multimorbidity and performing projections for DALYs into the future. Most important methodological choices and improvements are described and results are presented. Methods The DALY is composed of the two components years of life lost (YLL) due to premature mortality and years lost due to disability (YLD). Both the YLL and the YLD are distinguished by sex, age and health condition, allowing aggregation to the ICD-10 chapters. The YLD is corrected for multimorbidity, assuming independent occurrence of health conditions and a multiplicative method for the calculation of combined disability weights. Future ...