User:Savannah38

Christopher J.L. Murray
Christopher Murray is a scholar in global health and public health at the University of Washington in Seattle and is the institute director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). He is the author or editor of 14 books and more than 235 journal articles.

He previously served as Director of the Harvard Initiative for Global Health and as Executive Director of the Evidence and Information for Policy Cluster at the World Health Organization. He graduated from Harvard University in 1984 and was a Rhodes Scholar, attending Oxford University, where he earned a DPhil in International Health Economics. In 1988, he returned to Harvard, where he specialized in internal medicine and earned a Medical Doctorate. Since, he has worked on measurement of health and health outcomes at various levels, including national, regional, and international.

In 2007, he moved from Harvard to the University of Washington to head the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation with the help of former Mexican Secretary of Health, Julio Frenk, who serves as Chair of the Board of Directors. At the institute, Murray's work has included studying adult and child mortality, costs of various health interventions, and continuing work with colleagues at Harvard, the WHO and elsewhere on projects that conduct research and mine data to improve public health.

While at Harvard, Murray, along with medical demographer Alan Lopez, developed the disability adjusted life years (DALY) approach to measuring the global burden of disease. Using this approach, it is possible to calculate standardized estimates for the years of life lost due to disease, injury and risk factors over time. It is also possible to compare the effects of different diseases on a population. The research is intended to be used by policy makers to weigh healthcare decisions and allocate resources.

The idea behind the work was to remove politics and other pressures from the research questions. This led to some tension when the team moved to the World Health Organization. When countries and organizations were found to have poorer-than-expected health outcomes, they complained to the W.H.O. At one point, an independent committee was formed to review some of the results.

The DALY concept has since grown into much more common use, especially in the field of public health and health impact assessment.

His work attracted the attention of Bill Gates, who decided to use the concept of DALYs to help determine priorities and evaluate potential projects in global health.

In 2007, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with the state of Washington, established IHME and selected Murray as its leader. As head of IHME, Murray greatly expanded on his earlier research, leading an effort by hundreds of researchers worldwide to produce large-scale Global Burden of Disease reports in 2010 and 2013. The projects, which involved creating and then analyzing a database of over 800 million deaths, produced estimates for death and disability from 290 health conditions.

The work has been widely disseminated, and he is a named author on 35 articles associated with GBD.

In July 2014, he presented some of the GBD 2013 findings in Melbourne, Australia, at AIDS 2014, the largest conference of international HIV researchers, policymakers and people living with the disease.

He also spoke at TEDMED 2013, an international gathering of innovators in the field of medicine, including doctors, educators, nonprofits and government agencies. The topic of his talk was "What does a $100 million public health data revolution look like?"

Also in 2013, he and other IHME faculty and staff members were invited to the White House for an event associated with the Let's Move! campaign, which emphasizes healthy diets and physical activity to address the obesity problem. At the event, First Lady Michelle Obama cited IHME research in her talk, and Murray spoke about health trends and life expectancy projections gleaned from GBD 2010.

Some of the findings from his studies have been controversial. In 2010, the Lancet published one such study on global maternal death rates, showing, to the surprise of some in the field, that maternal mortality had dropped significantly over the prior three decades. Fearing the results might undermine their ongoing efforts, some advocacy groups tried to delay publication of the material, the Lancet editor said at the time.

In 2008, the Lancet published findings from Murray and IHME's work evaluating the work of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, (Gavi) which showed many countries had been exaggerating the number of children being immunized for diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus. The study found that progress in childhood immunizations is far lower than prior official reports. The countries were receiving funding for the vaccinations, raising the concern that Gavi may have paid out much more than it should have based on the number of children immunized. After the report was published Gavi suspended payments and commenced a review.

Kudos
IMO, EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT ! MaynardClark (talk) 19:15, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Savannah38
Hi there. I'm a writer in Seattle. The King County Housing Authority has asked me to help update its Wikipedia page because the information is out of date. An earlier attempt by the organization to update the figures was unsuccessful because it inadvertently violated some Wikipedia guidelines. I am being asked to remedy that situation. Since I'm doing this on behalf of the Housing Authority, I realize it may implicate the Wikipedia COI guidelines. However, my job is simply to replace the old figures with the most current information available, including citing the proper sources, so I don't believe I will run into issues. I will be happy to receive feedback from more experienced Wikipedia editors to help these processes go more smoothly in the future. Thanks to all you hardworking Wikipedians for making this such a great resource!