A new institute for global health evaluations

Abstract

The Gates Foundation this week announced a new initiative to strengthen capacity for evaluating international health programmes. The Health Metrics and Evaluation Institute will be sited at the University of Washington in Seattle with a US$105 million core grant from the Gates Foundation over 10 years. It will be led by Chris Murray, who is leaving Harvard University. The institute's board will be chaired by Julio Frenk, the former Minister of Health for Mexico.The new institute fills a critical gap. The enormous political and financial attention now being paid to global health has not been matched by improved sources of information on the performance of health systems and new health programmes. This shortfall in knowledge is hampering efforts to create a favourable environment for investments in health. Worst of all, the evidence gap is harming work to improve the health of the most vulnerable populations in the world.While the hub of this new venture will be in Seattle, Murray and his colleagues will also create an international network of collaborating centres to address key health needs. Their plans include the publication of an annual report card on global health, new tools for training in evaluation methods, and a freely accessible electronic global databank of health information.Existing agencies charged with monitoring and evaluating global health—eg, WHO, UNICEF, and the World Bank—may wonder if this new Gates initiative will compete with their own work. Far from it. These agencies have often struggled to maintain the technical capacity to guarantee a steady improvement in global health knowledge. The Gates initiative will complement their work and add new dimensions of rigour to their analyses. Priorities for the institute will include the analysis, synthesis, reporting, and archiving of data on mortality, causes of death, incidence and prevalence of disease and disability, burden of disease, health risks, coverage of priority interventions, resource flows, and health system assessments.This much needed initiative deserves wide support. The Gates Foundation this week announced a new initiative to strengthen capacity for evaluating international health programmes. The Health Metrics and Evaluation Institute will be sited at the University of Washington in Seattle with a US$105 million core grant from the Gates Foundation over 10 years. It will be led by Chris Murray, who is leaving Harvard University. The institute's board will be chaired by Julio Frenk, the former Minister of Health for Mexico. The new institute fills a critical gap. The enormous political and financial attention now being paid to global health has not been matched by improved sources of information on the performance of health systems and new health programmes. This shortfall in knowledge is hampering efforts to create a favourable environment for investments in health. Worst of all, the evidence gap is harming work to improve the health of the most vulnerable populations in the world. While the hub of this new venture will be in Seattle, Murray and his colleagues will also create an international network of collaborating centres to address key health needs. Their plans include the publication of an annual report card on global health, new tools for training in evaluation methods, and a freely accessible electronic global databank of health information. Existing agencies charged with monitoring and evaluating global health—eg, WHO, UNICEF, and the World Bank—may wonder if this new Gates initiative will compete with their own work. Far from it. These agencies have often struggled to maintain the technical capacity to guarantee a steady improvement in global health knowledge. The Gates initiative will complement their work and add new dimensions of rigour to their analyses. Priorities for the institute will include the analysis, synthesis, reporting, and archiving of data on mortality, causes of death, incidence and prevalence of disease and disability, burden of disease, health risks, coverage of priority interventions, resource flows, and health system assessments. This much needed initiative deserves wide support.