Research
We aim to put as much information as possible about health in the
public domain in a way that is useful, understandable and credible
to enable policy-makers and decision-makers to craft the best policies
with the highest benefit for their own context.
Through quantitative analysis and development of techniques to glean
information from multiple and varied sources we add value by focusing
on five areas: Health Outcomes; Health
Services; Resource Inputs; Decision
Analytics; and Evaluations.
Health Outcomes: We study
what makes people sick, what they die from and which risk factors
contribute to these outcomes. Ongoing research projects is the:
- estimation of child mortality levels for each country since 1970
forecasted 10 years into the future and updated every six months;
- development and testing of new methods for adult mortality and
estimation of levels for each country;
- assessment of major causes of death for each country every three
years;
- development of cross-country comparable methods for the estimation
of healthy life expectancy;
- estimation of the global burden
of disease
for 1990 and 2005, in collaboration with the World Health Organization,
the University of Queensland, Johns Hopkins University, Harvard
University, and over 800 researchers throughout the world.
Health Services: IHME
studies how health systems contribute to improving health outcomes
by measuring the delivery of specific interventions and the quality
of services. Research in this area currently focuses on two sub-fields:
- measuring the coverage of the twenty most important health-improving
technologies (including personal and non-personal interventions)
by country every year. The selection of priority interventions
will vary by region on the basis of epidemiology.
- estimating the quality of inpatient and outpatient care, including
the development and refinement of standardized methods for undertaking
risk-adjusted outcomes measurement.
Resource Inputs: In
this area we track, measure and estimate inputs to global health,
such as money, people, facilities, medications, and technology. IHME
currently focuses on four areas:
- annual assessment from 1990 to 2006 of resource flows for global
health, including an estimation of the gap between commitment and
disbursement.
- systematic review of the quality of available data on public
expenditures on health.
- estimation of household expenditure and catastrophic payments.
- landscape analysis of sources of data and methods for tracking
human resource.
Decision Analytics:
IHME is creating tools and evidence to help decision-makers weigh
different options and make meaningful comparisons. For example, how
do we characterize inequalities? How do we predict what might happen
in the future? Currently, we are engaged in the:
- development of statistical models for missing data, internally
consistent epidemiological parameter estimation, and forecasting.
- measurement of within and across country inequalities in coverage,
health outcomes, and health expenditures.
- development and dissemination in collaboration with the Health
Metrics network, of methods for local area estimation of health
outcomes and coverage.
- priority setting – major effort to combine burden of disease,
intervention coverage, cost-effectiveness, and resource information
to identify policy options for interventions and service delivery
platforms for different countries and regions.
Evaluations: Our
goal is to provide methods, tools and answers to the question: how
do we measure the impact of what is being done, whether it is a specific
policy, a specific intervention or a health system reform. IHME’s
researchers are working to:
- assess the performance of statistical methods for analyzing program
effectiveness in non-randomized settings.
- develop guidelines for prospective impact evaluation.
- impact evaluation of global health initiatives and strategies.
- assess the performance of national health systems for countries
with sufficient data.
- evaluate, based on demand, specific national health system reforms.
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