Acting on Data

Dr. Binagwaho is using Global Burden of Disease data to improve the health of Rwandans in two major ways: directly, by using GBD results to prioritize policy and health focus areas, and collaboratively, by training Ministry of Health staff to better understand these measures and metrics, and by sharing data collected locally to improve GBD estimates.

Trends in the world’s most populous countries have a huge impact on the global health picture overall. If the child mortality rate improves even modestly in a country as big as India, it can have enormous implications for the total number of children who die before the age of 5 every year. That’s one of the reasons it was such an important step for global health efforts when China took an active role in the Global Burden of Disease project.

Dr. Rodrigo Guerrero, a Harvard-trained epidemiologist and mayor of Cali, Colombia, won the inaugural Roux Prize in 2014. He has dedicated his career to bettering his community by preventing violence in what has historically been one of the most violent cities in the world.

Michael Bloomberg built his media company by using data to make smart decisions and by selling data. Then, when he took on the role of New York City Mayor, Bloomberg turned to a different kind of data: disease burden evidence.

Change isn’t always easy, but sometimes it’s essential to help you reach your goals.

On paper, it can sound like a straightforward goal: reduce tobacco usage worldwide to lower the health impacts from cancer and cardiovascular disease. Achieving it is far from easy.

Walk into the home of a low-income family in India and you are likely to see one of the leading causes of premature death and disability: a wood-fired cookstove.

Even though the dangers of tobacco use have been well-documented for decades, concerted outreach is often essential to engage policymakers in the fight against tobacco.

In the United Kingdom, finding out how the UK’s population health compared to that of other countries helped spur policy action.

The Western Cape Health Department used the evidence published in a 2007 report to motivate local government officials to address a major cause of premature death and disability: alcohol.

A collaborative approach figured prominently in the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) National Strategy and Action Plan for Environmental Health, designed to address the burden of disease from air pollution and other environmental causes.

“The burden of disease and injury in Australia 2003,” a report released in 2007, showed that tobacco use was the leading risk factor for disease burden in the country.