Today saw the first Board meeting of a new Gates-funded initiative – the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Located as an independent entity within the University of Washington, the Institute, directed by Chris Murray, has an incredibly ambitious plan for its first two years. It has the potential to transform utterly the landscape of global health.

The Board, chaired by Mexico’s former Minister of Health, Julio Frenk, exists as the supreme governing body of IHME. It has the job of evaluating Chris and his team. It consists of some stellar individuals, most notably, judging by today’s meeting, Jane Halton, Australia’s Secretary in the Department of Health (who has the mind of a razor sharp arrow and the political antennae of the most acute politician), Lincoln Chen, President of the China Medical Board (whose sensitivity to ethical issues makes him a superb moral compass for IHME), and Harvey Fineberg, President of the Institute of Medicine (whose experience on similar Boards gives him a sixth sense for the unseen traps facing a very young and very public new initiative).

Here are the highlights.

1. IHME has 10 years of Gates funding ($105 million) to guarantee its independence and intellectual freedom.

2. It will spend $15 million in the coming year, scaling up and starting its programme of work.

3. It will produce an annual report card on the state of global health, beginning in 2010.

4. It will create a GenBank for global health data.

5. Its work will include programmes on health outcomes, health services, aid flows, indicators, and evaluations – beginning with a warts-and-all evaluation of the Gates-funded Avahan project in India.

If I sat on the Board, what would be my measures of success in 3-5 years time?

1. A strong(er) and proven commitment to equity.

2. A demonstrable contribution to country capacity building.

3. A serious effort to increase country leadership in setting the agenda for health metrics and evaluation.

4. To be inclusive in the Institute’s definition of science, by including economics, political science, anthropology, history, and philosophy to inform the numbers generated.

5. To overcome fears about destructive competition by IHME by showing the value of responsible competition through trust, respect, confidence, and creative partnerships.

The world needs more capacity in health information. The Institute helps that objective. The question we might ask is: what can be done to support the larger vision for health information? Each of us has a part to play in answering this question…

Richard Horton

Bookmark on delicious | Digg

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 7:27 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can trackback from your own site.