Global Burden of Disease Project

I think disability rights advocates had better watch this project.

 

Global Burden of Disease (GDB) Project:

PROVIDING INFORMATION IN A WAY THAT IS MAXIMALLY USEFUL FOR FUNDERS AND POLICY-MAKERS

 

It is a project going on since last fall in the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation that the University of Washington newly opened by dint of its history’s biggest private gift of $105 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (For IHME details, please visit my post, There was a lot more going on than the hospital’s building purchase.)

 

The project title says a lot. They claim it has established a new “burden assessment” method called DALY (disability-adjusted life years). Checking mortality is not enough in burden assessment because people don’t just die, they get disabled. That’s basicallly what they say. They are “strongly seeking new burden statistics” and “providing information in a way that is maximally useful for funders and policy-makers.”

 

Four “key benefits” of this study are listed in GDB site.

1.      Evidence-based evaluation

2.      Changing awareness and validity of different global health conditions

3.      Cost-effectiveness analysis

4.      Engaging researchers, experts, and policymakers

 

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a story on April 9 about the director of the new institute, Christopher Murray and this project. The Seattle Times also ran a story. There is a long story about Dr. Murray’s life and career in the UW alumni magazine site. I find Dr. Murray’s comments in these stories very alarming. He is trying to set cost-effective “gold standards” for the global health policies and thus promoting a culture all over the world to redeem disease and disability negatively as burden to be eradicated.

 

Also alarming is the fact that the Lancet announced its collaboration with IHME. The editor in chief, Richard Horton and Christopher Murray with another wrote an informercial in the Lancet (2008; 371:1139-1140), A new initiative and invitation for health monitoring, tracking, and evaluation and wrote:

 

Given a shared mission and vision for global health monitoring, The Lancet and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) are pleased to announce a collaboration that should stimulate researchers around the world to apply the best science to the challenges of monitoring global health.

 

They are starting a new section Global Health Tracking and IHME will publish at least six papers in the section each year to “kick-start” a call for paper submissions from scientists.

 

See who are on the IHME board, too.

 

What the heck is going on here?