Kavita Batra (Medicine) along with GBD 2021 Causes of Death Collaborators published a study "Global burden of 288 causes of death and life expectancy decomposition in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021" in the Lancet journal. Per findings of this study, the leading causes of age-standardized deaths globally were the same in 2019 as they were in 1990; in descending order, these were, ischemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lower respiratory infections. In 2021, however, COVID-19 replaced stroke as the second-leading age-standardized cause of death, shifted the rankings of the leading five causes, lowering stroke to the third-leading and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to the fourth-leading position. Batra is actively working with the Global Collaborators on research funded by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to investigate epidemiology of several chronic health conditions.