Acting on Data

Knowing what someone died of can be complicated. We often talk and think about death as a singular event. We say, “he died of cancer” or “she died of old age.” In reality, a series of domino effects are often occurring inside the body that lead to someone’s death. 

Estimates are only as strong as the evidence they are built on. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study produces millions of estimates of health around the globe, estimates that are informing real-world policy and implementation. That means that they have to be built on good data, and a lot of it.

At the US Senate on April 17, 2018, Professor Ali Mokdad presented findings about health in the US at a briefing for Senate health staff. The goal of the presentation was to raise awareness about how Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data could be a valuable resource for them, and how states can use GBD data to advocate for money to address different health problems.

What do the largest development bank, largest global public health agency, and largest funder of primary biomedical research have in common? Well, among other things, their use of IHME’s work for decision-making.

Precision maps reveal significant health and education disparities within African nations.

These updated findings are important to understanding today’s gains and gaps for the health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and are essential for decision-makers as they aim to improve the health of populations. We have highlighted some uses and coverage of last year’s SDG report and paired them with particularly interesting or notable findings from GBD 2016.

The FIA Foundation’s recent report, “Step Change: An Action Agenda on Safe Walking for Africa’s Children,” uses data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study to highlight the high burden of road traffic injuries among children in sub-Saharan Africa. The FIA Foundation is a UK-based charity that promotes road safety, the environment, and sustainable transport, and funds research on motor sport safety.

A new analysis by Global Burden of Disease collaborators highlights that people are still dying from preventable, treatable causes, and reveals inequitable global progress in improving healthcare access and quality. Having already sparked global interest, results from this analysis are a reminder that development is not the only indicator of healthcare access and quality, and that improvements can occur more rapidly, particularly in countries that are lagging behind. 

A new study from IHME contributors on “Inequalities in life expectancy among US counties, 1980 to 2014” has provoked widespread attention and discussion from media organizations, decision-makers, and the public.While life expectancy has increased for the US as a whole, the inequality among counties and regions was far more dramatic than most expected, with differences of as much as 20 years between the counties with the highest and lowest life expectancies.

Those who influence decisions on development assistance for health are facing a “very uncertain, dramatic moment that is unprecedented,” said Stephen Morrison, Senior Vice President and Director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, speaking April 20 at a policy briefing in Washington, DC. The discussion focused on two newly published papers on financing global health by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.