IHME Experts Speak

Before leaving home for a trip to the market, you likely know how much you plan to spend and how much food you will get for your money. This basic understanding of how much food your money will buy allows you to budget effectively and makes your shopping experience much less stressful. For most purchases, it is critical to understand how much money you have and what that money will purchase,  Unfortunately, this basic concept is all too often absent in health systems, particularly in primary health care (PHC) systems.

Uganda has achieved large gains against malaria through improving intervention delivery. At the same time, this year’s outbreak in northern Uganda highlights a need for stronger, more focal monitoring of malaria needs. No magic bullet exists against malaria, nor will a one-size-fits-all solution work to end the disease. But by harnessing local evidence and devising multipronged, targeted programs, Uganda aims to accelerate toward its goal of reaching zero malaria.

We know what works to fight pneumonia in children. Improving access to prompt diagnosis and treatment of pneumonia and scaling up vaccines that protect children against particularly deadly strains has occurred in many countries. So why has progress against pneumonia fallen behind?

China’s emphasis on providing primary health care to even the most remote areas has paid off. Yet, despite impressive health progress, massive disparities persist within China.

Twenty-five years ago, the state of public health for large populations was like that of a doctor trying to treat a patient without a proper diagnosis. The diseases and injuries that cut lives short and caused widespread suffering were not rigorously tracked. To address this problem, Alan Lopez and Christopher Murray launched the Global Burden of Disease project (GBD) in 1990. Decision-makers need information about the world’s biggest health threats and how they have changed over time, across age groups, and by sex, so they can ensure that everyone has the opportunity to live the longest, healthiest life possible.

In the era of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), regular reporting of specific health indicators drew public and policy attention, and ultimately resources, to causes such as maternal and child health. On Sept 25–27, 2015, the UN Sustainable Development Summit was held in New York, NY, USA, leading to the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the UN General Assembly. On the basis of the lessons learned from the MDGs, the indicators chosen for each SDG target will probably determine the amount of action and attention each target receives.

If you asked the average global health professional to name the countries where alcohol caused the most health problems, what would they say?

Representatives of national governments are now coming together to set the next development agenda, under the umbrella of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as the era of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) concludes. In order to attain the new goals, it may help to revisit what worked — and what didn't — in achieving the successes of the MDGs over the past 15 years.

The negotiations for the next set of development goals have yielded hope for advocates fighting hepatitis. The disease made it under goal 3 in the draft outcome document that is expected to be adopted in September at the UN General Assembly, which means it now has a better chance of mobilizing resources. But just how much will it really take to bring the disease under control, and eventually eliminate it?

We propose a Lives Saved Scorecard to drive funding and policy attention to where it is most needed. The ideal scorecard would track all investments by donors and governments, the coverage of each life-saving intervention, the quality of interventions delivered, and the link to child deaths averted in a cross-country, comparable manner.

There’s plenty of moral and rhetorical support for fighting diseases of poverty, but if you look at global health spending trends lately the story is one of stagnation, or even decline.

People are living longer, but with more disease and disability: an unprecedented transition from a world with communicable diseases to one with chronic disease and disability, with implications for welfare of people worldwide. Yet health systems and economies are not prepared for this transition. Instead, asymmetry between health-system responses and the growing needs is worsening, as are inequalities.

A lot of progress has been made against measles, but many around the world remain unlucky when it comes to this deadly and disabling disease. And bad luck, when it comes to infectious disease, travels.

The benefits of breastfeeding to the health and development of newborn children are well-documented, with ‘exclusive’ breastfeeding in the first six months of life shown to enhance children’s immunity to infectious disease

Like many fields, public health is in the midst of a data revolution: randomized control trials, pay-for-performance and value calculations, all based on data, are changing our ideas about what works and how to finance it.

A new study reveals that while Zambia has made great progress against malaria over the past decade or so it was losing ground on many other health needs like basic child immunizations and maternal health care.