Acting on Data

The deadline for nominations for the 2017 Roux Prize – January 31, 2017 – is approaching quickly. To provide inspiration, we are revisiting the story of last year’s winner, Dr. John Q. Wong. Dr. Wong used burden of disease data to help the country’s government insurance program expand coverage to 15 million people most in need and reduce their out-of-pocket costs for health care.

Results from IHME’s Global Burden of Disease study have consistently ranked air pollution as a leading risk factor for death and disability, particularly for women and children. Using these findings, US senator Susan Collins introduced a bill that calls for more US involvement in the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership supported by the UN Foundation, to help achieve its 2020 goals.

Diabetes is an increasingly important health threat in many African countries, and is fast becoming a leading cause of non-communicable-disease-related death and disability on the continent. A new report by IHME, launched in Nairobi at the Pan African World Diabetes Day Forum, is helping the Kenyan Ministry of Health frame its strategy for tackling the disease.

When it comes to how Americans die, not all counties are created equal. IHME’s latest findings reveal a 15-year difference between counties with the lowest and highest life expectancies for American women in 2013 – 71 years in McDowell County, West Virginia, to 86 years in Marin County, California. 

What are essential medicines and who should pay for them, especially in lower-income countries? Those questions and others were studied by The Lancet’s Commission on Essential Medicines Policies and explored in a series of articles published recently in the London-based medical journal.

While decision-makers, researchers, and clinicians around the globe regularly use Global Burden of Disease (GBD) estimates to inform their work and set policy, educators are also finding value in incorporating this research and IHME resources into their curricula. 

Over the past few years, the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study has grown a network of expert collaborators with an array of experience, competencies, and disciplines, and it is this diversity of perspective that makes GBD the most comprehensive view of global health burden in the world. One collaborator, Dr. Jayaraman, discussed her unique vantage point as a clinician in October during the GBD 2015 launch event, and we had the opportunity to learn more about Dr. Jayaraman’s experiences after the event.

Adolescence is often overlooked in health policy and planning, despite the fact that it represents a crucial period of life for addressing risks and preventing health problems in later life. Guided by insights from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, the Government of India has prioritized the needs of adolescents in a comprehensive strategy to address the determinants of poor health for women, children, and young people.  

For World Diabetes Day (WDD), IHME showcased a variety of diabetes-related resources that can be used by decision-makers. IHME’s WDD social media campaign demonstrated how IHME’s online data visualization tool GBD Compare can be used to compare trends across countries, ages, sexes, and time periods.

Public Health England (PHE) just wrapped up the fifth year of their “Stoptober” challenge, a campaign to get 7 million people in England to stop smoking. This campaign reflects one of the seven priorities outlined in PHE’s plan of action, “From evidence into action: opportunities to protect and improve the nation’s health,” which was crafted using data from the Global Burden of Disease Study. 

Thomas J. Bollyky and Eric Goosby use IHME research to make the case for continued U.S. leadership and investment in global health.

To provide Namibia with actionable evidence to guide the country’s universal health coverage agenda,  the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO), Namibia, recently published the report “Namibia: State of the Nation’s Health: Findings from the Global Burden of Disease.”

In New Zealand, the Ministry of Health is using Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data to guide the country’s health strategy for the next 10 years and beyond. An extensive new report, entitled Health Loss in New Zealand 1990-2013: A report from the New Zealand Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors, provides a big-picture look at New Zealand’s health landscape. By outlining the major causes of health loss in the country over the past two decades, it aims to guide policymakers, funders, researchers, and front-line providers in their efforts to ensure that all New Zealanders are “living well, staying well, and getting well.”

The world’s most comprehensive tool for measuring disease burden and guiding government health agendas just got better. Last Friday, the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study enterprise – a collaboration among more than 1,800 health experts in 125 countries – launched updated estimates through 2015 for an expanded set of causes and risk factors for health loss in 195 countries and territories. To celebrate this update, IHME co-sponsored an event with The Lancet and the World Bank. The Washington, DC launch of GBD 2015 featured panels of experts and decision-makers who were convened to discuss the key findings of the study, and how GBD 2015 results may be used to identify and act on health issues around the globe. Here are a few great insights from experts who attended the launch on using data to improve health: “The study’s observations are important in the context of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Policy-makers need the best available evidence to make informed health policy decisions and to determine how to allocate resources. Some countries in sub-Saharan Africa face significant health challenges despite improvements in income and education, while other countries further behind in terms of development are seeing strong progress. Policymakers in all nations – from Senegal to South Africa and Equatorial Guinea to Eritrea – need to align spending to target the things that will make their communities healthier faster.” -Charles Shey Wiysonge, Deputy Director of the Centre for Evidence-based Health Care at Stellenbosch University and Chief Specialist Scientist of the South African Medical Research Council. Dr. Wiysonge is also a GBD collaborator. Read Dr. Wiysonge’s full post on the GBD 2015 study on the World Economic Forum’s website here. … “As a clinician, it’s important to be at this table. That is the army that is out there. That is the army that has the relationships with the patients and the communities. There is a real human being under these numbers, and our goal is to advance health. That means engaging clinicians around the world, partnering them effectively with ministries of health.” - Sudha Jayaraman, a practicing surgeon and Assistant Professor of Acute Care Surgical Services at Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Jayaraman is also a longtime GBD collaborator. … “We try to get as close to the truth as we possibly can by writing the story of health amongst the people on our planet. As we do so, we recognize progress, but we also see the huge challenges ahead. As we look at those challenges, we refuse to allow ourselves to be saddened by them. Indeed, we turn that around and make ourselves excited by the potential and the prize we have before us.” -Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet … “This linking of disease, geospatial mapping, and impact on programing is really extraordinarily important, and it allows us to model out the counterfactuals and factuals by different interventions … The more geospatial relevance and the more age and sex disaggregated data we have, the more we are able to see not only where we are, but model where we could be and make sure our policy decisions have impact.” -Deborah Birx, Ambassador-at-Large and United States Global AIDS Coordinator  

In Mexico, evidence from the Global Burden of Disease study plays a central role in guiding health policy. As Secretary of Health of Mexico from 2000 to 2006, Dr. Julio Frenk was the first leader in the country to use Global Burden of Disease (GBD) findings to guide health policy. Burden of Disease research helped shape the package of health services provided to all Mexicans.