Medium: How do you spend $5 billion a year?
Sue Desmond-Hellmann, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, writes, “[R]obust and rigorous data are essential in helping us turn the tide on many of the deadly and debilitating diseases that kill millions of people, and trap millions more in poor health and poverty.” Desmond-Hellmann discusses the work of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) on data and global health and announces a $279 million grant to the IHME. “This 10-year investment means the IHME can not only build on its current efforts, which include evaluating progress on the Sustainable Development Goals and tracking how health resources are spent throughout the world, but also develop innovations that forecast future health scenarios to allow decision-makers to plan more purposefully. As one of the largest donations in the foundation’s history, this contribution is a vote of confidence in IHME’s work,” she writes (1/25).