Research Articles

To better understand the global response to HIV/AIDS, this study tracked development assistance for HIV/AIDS at a granular, program level.

The burden of cancer in Mexico shows complex regional patterns by age, sex, types of cancer, and deprivation status. The study analyzed mortality and incidence for 28 cancers by deprivation status, age and sex from 1990 to 2013. 

High-quality epidemiological studies evaluating the burden of cutaneous leishmaniasis worldwide are lacking. We compared the burden of cutaneous leishmaniasis in each country to the overall global burden and assessed the equality of cutaneous leishmaniasis burden across different countries and regions.

In the 2012 Global Vaccine Action Plan, development assistance partners committed to providing sustainable financing for vaccines and expanding vaccination coverage to all children in low- and middle-income countries by 2020. To assess progress toward these goals, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation produced estimates of development assistance for vaccinations.

Low-resource countries can greatly benefit from even small increases in efficiency of health service provision, supporting a strong case to measure and pursue efficiency improvement in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, the knowledge base concerning efficiency measurement remains scarce for these contexts.

Care practices and risk factors for diarrhea among impoverished communities across Mesoamerica are unknown. Using Salud Mesoamérica Initiative baseline data, collected 2011–2013, we assessed the prevalence of diarrhea, adherence to evidence-based treatment guidelines, and potential diarrhea correlates in poor and indigenous communities across Mesoamerica. This study surveyed 14,500 children under 5 years of age in poor areas of El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico (Chiapas State), Nicaragua, and Panama. 

In May, 2015, locally acquired cases of Zika virus—an arbovirus found in Africa and Asia-Pacific and transmitted via Aedes mosquitoes—were confirmed in Brazil. The presence of Aedes mosquitoes across Latin America, coupled with suitable climatic conditions, have triggered a Zika virus epidemic in Brazil, currently estimated at 440 000–1 300 000 cases.

Pathogen distribution models that predict spatial variation in disease occurrence require data from a large number of geographic locations to generate disease risk maps. We have developed a supervised learning process to validate geolocated disease outbreak data in a timely manner. 

In this study, we report findings from exit surveys of patients receiving HIV and non-HIV services at a diverse sample of facilities across Zambia.

In the absence of comprehensive medical certification of deaths, the only feasible way to collect essential mortality data is verbal autopsy (VA). The Tariff Method was developed by the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium to ascertain causes of death from VA information. We describe the further development of the Tariff Method.

The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors study (GBD) used the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) to quantify the burden of diseases, injuries, and risk factors. This paper provides an overview of injury estimates from the 2013 update of GBD, with detailed information on incidence, mortality, DALYs, and rates of change from 1990 to 2013 for 26 causes of injury, globally, by region, and by country.