July 2007: The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) launches with the goal of providing an impartial, evidence-based picture of global health trends to inform the work of policymakers, researchers, and funders. Main supporters are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the state of Washington.
September 2008: First Post-Graduate Fellows arrive at IHME. Fellows have since come from numerous countries, including Kenya, Nepal, and Brazil. Past fellows continue their public health work in positions including research associate at the Japanese International Cooperation Agency's Research Institute, professor of community medicine in Sri Lanka, and senior technical advisor to Botswana’s ministry of health.
December 2008: IHME’s assessment of diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus vaccination programs is published in The Lancet, challenging accepted numbers and paving the way for new approaches to track the effectiveness of such programs.
April 2009: IHME releases initial work on risk factors in PLOS Medicine. Included are estimates of the impact of risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking, high blood sugar, and overweight/obesity in the US.
July 2009: First Financing Global Health (FGH) report is published, tracking more than $200 billion in public and private contributions to public health. Annual updates to FGH are produced in following years.
September 2009: The Health Metrics and Evaluation track of the Master of Public Health program is offered for the first time through the University of Washington’s School of Public Health.
April 2010: “Maternal mortality for 181 countries, 1980-2008: a systematic analysis of progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5” is published in The Lancet, changing the conversation about maternal mortality. The New York Times features the study in a front-page article, Maternal Deaths Decline Sharply Across the Globe. To illustrate the maternal mortality trends, IHME produces its first data visualizations.
June 2010: IHME’s first Post-Bachelor Fellowship cohort graduates from the Master of Public Health program at the University of Washington. Since then, this has become one of the most sought-after fellowships in the country, attracting hundreds of applicants each year.
March 2011: The Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx) is launched at the Global Health Metrics and Evaluation conference, creating the world’s most comprehensive catalog of surveys, censuses, vital statistics, and other health-related data.
June 2011: IHME’s initial US county-level life expectancy work is published in Population Health Metrics, showing that the US is falling behind other countries.
October 2011: The results of IHME’s assessment of Avahan, an HIV-prevention program in India, appear in The Lancet.
May 2012: IHME begins an innovative, multiyear collaboration with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to create an integrated tracking system that will monitor health and inform health policy priorities.
September 2012: First cohort of students begin PhD program in Global Health: Metrics and Implementation Science through the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington, while also working as research assistants at IHME.
December 2012: The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010 (GBD 2010), covering the years 1990 to 2010, is published in The Lancet, the first time the journal has dedicated an entire triple issue to one study. A collaborative effort of 488 researchers from 303 institutions in 50 countries, GBD 2010 covers 187 countries, 20 age groups, 21 regions, 291 diseases and injuries, and 67 risk factors.
March 2013: Country-specific findings from GBD 2010 are released, detailing changes in health between 1990 and 2010 and main risk factors in each of 187 countries.
June 2013: Following a productive policy summit in China, IHME begins a collaboration with Chinese health officials to measure the burden of disease in provinces throughout the country.
July 2013: Policy report “The State of US Health: Innovations, Insights, and Recommendations from the Global Burden of Disease Study” is released at a White House event with first lady Michelle Obama.
September 2013: In a collaboration with the World Bank, IHME produces six regional GBD reports, introduced by IHME Director Christopher Murray at an event at the Bank’s headquarters in Washington, DC. This marks the 20th anniversary of the original disease burden work.
November 2013: The Roux Prize is launched to reward use of Global Burden of Disease evidence to improve health.
January 2014: First installment of GBD 2013, “Smoking Prevalence and Cigarette Consumption in 187 Countries, 1980-2012,” is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Further GBD updates are released throughout the year.
August 2014: Dr. Christopher Murray presents findings from the paper “Global, regional, and national incidence and mortality for HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria during 1990–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013” at a symposium at the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne. He is joined by Michel Sidibé, Executive Director of UNAIDS; Deborah Birx, United States Global AIDS coordinator; and Mark Dybul, Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; with Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet, as moderator.
September 2014: Dr. Rodrigo Guerrero, mayor of Cali, Colombia, wins the inaugural Roux Prize for using data to address violence as a public health crisis.
October 2014: The University of Washington Center for Health Trends and Forecasts is established at IHME. Funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the new Center joins 11 NIA Demography Centers at leading universities and policy organizations around the United States.
December 2014: Country-specific cause-of-death data from the Global Burden of Disease enterprise are published in The Lancet, showing that life expectancy has increased worldwide since 1990 as death rates from infectious diseases and cardiovascular disease have fallen.
April 2015: Epic Measures: One Doctor, Seven Billion Patients is published by Harper Wave. Written by journalist Jeremy N. Smith, the book chronicles the Global Burden of Disease enterprise’s development, from Director Christopher Murray’s early interest in population health to the first few years of IHME’s existence.
May 2015: IHME and the World Health Organization sign a landmark agreement to improve data used to generate estimates of levels and trends in health.
July 2015: The Lives Saved Scorecard shows that from 2000 to 2014, countries and donors spent a combined $207 billion on children’s health – and saved the lives of 34 million children.
October 2015: A subnational disease burden initiative is launched in India through a collaboration between IHME, the Indian Council of Medical Research, and the Public Health Foundation of India, under the aegis of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.
October 2015: The University of Washington Press publishes An Integrative Metaregression Framework for Descriptive Epidemiology, an in-depth explanation of the methods underlying the morbidity estimation in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study.
October 2015: Dr. Agnes Binagwaho, Minister of Health of Rwanda, is awarded the 2015 Roux Prize for using GBD data to improve Rwandan health. Among her achievements are initiatives to improve indoor air quality and combat neonatal deaths.
November 2015: IHME joins the newly formed Partners for Diagnosis and Treatment, a coalition created by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and led by the American Society of Clinical Pathology in order to improve cancer diagnostics and treatment in low-income countries.