News

Nine faculty members from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine have been named to a list of highly cited researchers for 2019, reflecting their broad influence and contributions to their fields. 

Current trends in fertility and maternal mortality lead researchers to project that more than 150,000 women will die during pregnancy and childbirth in 2030. In the US, where spending on health care is among the highest in the world, the maternal mortality ratio increased by nearly 70% between 2000 and 2017, from 18 deaths per 100,000 live births to 30.

Despite large declines since 1990 in child deaths from pneumonia and the flu, these and other lower respiratory infections (LRIs) remain a leading killer of children under age 5. A new scientific study finds LRIs responsible for one in seven child deaths globally.

The 2018 recipient of the Roux Prize, Dr. Cynthia Maung, recently sent IHME an inspiring letter detailing how the $100,000 award has been spent. She was awarded the Roux Prize for using health data to improve the lives of refugees, migrant workers, and internally displaced people along the Burmese-Thai border.

While the number of new cancer cases in children and adolescents (aged 0-19 years) is relatively low at around 416,500 globally in 2017, treatment-related ill-health and disability and fatal cancer are estimated to cause around 11.5 million years of healthy life lost globally every year, according to the first Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) to assess childhood and adolescent cancer burden in 195 countries in 2017, published in The Lancet Oncology journal.

In a new commentary, 20 health data, financing, and policy experts contend that funding for low- and middle-income nations must be increased to address the growing impacts of climate change, wars and conflicts, and a global political trend toward nationalism. They also argue that increased domestic funding is needed to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including universal health coverage.

New research published today in The Lancet examines high-resolution images in areas where the fight to defeat malaria is succeeding and where it has stalled. Two studies present the most comprehensive picture to date of the Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum parasites, which cause the majority of the global malaria burden.

Dr. Richard Horton, the “activist editor” of the international medical journal The Lancet, was honored June 10 for his accomplishments as one of the world’s most “committed, articulate, and influential advocates for population health." He received the Roux Prize, given annually to individuals on the front lines of global health innovation in data science.

The United States is one of only eight countries in the world where decreases in child and adolescent mortality over a 27-year period haven’t also been matched by reductions in maternal mortality, according to a new scientific study. This divergent trend also was found in American Samoa, Canada, Greece, Guam, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Zimbabwe. Of these countries, the United States had the largest increase in maternal mortality rate at 67.5%.

A first-of-its-kind study reveals malaria spending in 2016 totaled $4.3 billion globally, far short of the annual funding target of $6.6 billion set by the World Health Organization. An increase of more than 50% in resources is needed annually to bridge the considerable $2.3 billion gap and meet the WHO target.

Many African nations have made substantial progress in vaccinating children against life-threatening diseases; however, within countries wide discrepancies remain, according to a new scientific study. The proportion of children receiving the full infant series of three vaccinations against diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus (DPT3) increased in almost three quarters of districts in Africa between 2000 and 2016. In 29 of 52 nations studied, however, coverage with DPT3 varied by more than 25% at the district level, highlighting substantial variation within countries.

Exposure to outdoor and indoor air pollution could, on average shorten the life of a child born today by 20 months, according to a new global study, State of Global Air 2019.