Policy Reports

Pushing the Pace: Progress and Challenges in Fighting Childhood Pneumonia examines recent gains in reducing child deaths from pneumonia. This report advances our understanding of the burden of childhood pneumonia and its toll within the context of the leading killers of children; global trends in funding to address pneumonia; and health system factors involved in the effective prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of pneumonia.

This report draws from the Access, Bottlenecks, Costs, and Equity (ABCE) project in Uganda, a multi-pronged and multi-country research collaboration focused on understanding what drives and hinders health service provision.

Assessing Impact, Improving Health: Progress in Child Health Across Districts in Zambia is the culmination of the Malaria Control Policy Assessment (MCPA) project in Zambia, which has sought to quantify the impact of malaria control and other child health interventions on reductions in under-5 mortality across districts in Zambia.

This report quantifies, for the first time, the global health loss from injuries and air pollution that can be attributed to motorized road transport. It combines estimates of the global burden of road injuries based on a large pool of new data from the most information-poor regions with estimates of the health effects of pollution from vehicles.

The Global Burden of Disease: Generating Evidence, Guiding Policy—South Asia Regional Edition presents key changes in the leading causes of premature mortality and disability in South Asia and explores intraregional differences in diseases, injuries, and risk factors. The publication shows that non-communicable diseases are increasingly causing more premature mortality and disability, while the region continues to grapple with high burdens of communicable conditions. Published by the World Bank and IHME, the report is based on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010 (GBD 2010), a collaborative effort of researchers from 50 countries around the world led by IHME at the University of Washington.

The Global Burden of Disease: Generating Evidence, Guiding Policy—Middle East and North Africa Regional Edition summarizes the main findings for the Middle East and North Africa and explores the leading causes of diseases, injuries, and risk factors in countries across the region. The publication shows that in the Middle East and North Africa, health challenges are becoming increasingly similar to those in Western countries. Published by the World Bank and IHME, the report is based on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010 (GBD 2010), a collaborative effort of researchers from 50 countries around the world led by IHME at the University of Washington.

The Global Burden of Disease: Generating Evidence, Guiding Policy—Europe and Central Asia Regional Edition summarizes regional findings for Europe and Central Asia and explores intraregional differences in diseases, injuries, and risk factors. The report finds that chronic disease and a gender gap in health are taking a growing toll in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Published by the World Bank and IHME, the report is based on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010 (GBD 2010), a collaborative effort of researchers from 50 countries around the world led by IHME at the University of Washington.

This policy report presents key findings from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010 (GBD 2010) for the US and documents trends in nearly 300 different diseases and injuries that are killing people prematurely and disabling them. The report sheds light on the substantial health threat posed by potentially modifiable risk factors such as poor diet, high body mass index, and lack of physical activity. It also provides an in-depth look at life expectancy, obesity, and physical activity in US counties.  

Financing Global Health 2012: The End of the Golden Age? is IHME’s fourth annual report on global health expenditure and includes preliminary estimates for health financing in the most recent years. In this year’s report, IHME built on its past data collection and analysis efforts to monitor the resources made available through development assistance for health (DAH) and government health expenditure (GHE). It confirms what many in the global health community expected: After reaching a historic high in 2010, overall DAH declined slightly in 2011, with some organizations and governments spending more and others spending less.

The IHME policy report The Challenge Ahead: Progress and Setbacks in Breast and Cervical Cancer outlines global, regional, and country trends in cancer cases, deaths, and risks over the past three decades. This is the first global assessment of country-specific trends in breast and cervical cancer for all countries by age and the findings were simultaneously published in The Lancet on September 14, 2011. 

This detailed report includes data on mortality trends for more than 180 countries over two decades. Researchers at IHME, working in collaboration with researchers at the University of Queensland, gathered vital registration data, censuses, surveys, and other sources to create datasets that were more than twice as large as those available for previous studies on maternal and child mortality.