Christopher J.L. Murray | |
---|---|
Born | Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. | August 15, 1962
Known for | Public health |
Relatives | Megan B. Murray (sister) |
Awards | John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award (2018) Rhodes Scholarship |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | IHME University of Washington Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health World Health Organization |
Website | www |
Christopher J.L. Murray [1] [2] (born August 16, 1962) is an American physician, health economist, and global health researcher. He is a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he is Chair of Health Metrics Science and the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). [3]
Beginning in 1990, he has worked on ways to measure the burden of disease and disability around the globe. He has led several projects to gather that data, disease-by-disease, country by country. The aim of these efforts, which involves the work of hundreds of researchers, is to provide data for policy makers around the world to allocate healthcare resources.
Murray was born to a New Zealand-born scientist father and grew up in Minnesota with three siblings, including Megan B. Murray. [4] As his father was an internist and mother was a microbiologist, the family moved to Niger for various charitable medical missions. [5]
Murray 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. [6] 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. He was a part of the Disease Control Priorities Project. In 2005–2007, Murray was director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.[ citation needed ]
In 2007, Murray 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. [7] 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.[ citation needed ]
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation COVID model was called the Chris Murray model in White House press briefings. [8]
In 2020, Murray was appointed by the Council on Foreign Relations to serve on its Independent Task Force on Improving Pandemic Preparedness, co-chaired by Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Frances Fragos Townsend. [9]
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 healthy 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. [10] The research is intended to be used by policy makers to weigh healthcare decisions and allocate resources. [11]
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. [10]
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. [10] In 2007, the Bill & 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 486 researchers from 302 institutions in 50 countries to produce Global Burden of Disease reports in 2010 and 2013. [10]
The later reports were significantly larger than the first. In 1990, for example, researchers catalogued 107 diseases and injuries. [12] The 2013 report involved creating and then analyzing a database of over 800 million deaths, and produced estimates for death and disability from 240 health conditions. [13] [14]
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. [15]
In 2008, The Lancet published findings from Murray and IHME's work evaluating the work of Gavi, the vaccine alliance, which showed many countries had been inflating the number of children being immunized for diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus. [16] 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. [17]
Whooping cough, also known as pertussis or the 100-day cough, is a highly contagious, vaccine-preventable bacterial disease. Initial symptoms are usually similar to those of the common cold with a runny nose, fever, and mild cough, but these are followed by two or three months of severe coughing fits. Following a fit of coughing, a high-pitched whoop sound or gasp may occur as the person breathes in. The violent coughing may last for 10 or more weeks, hence the phrase "100-day cough". The cough may be so hard that it causes vomiting, rib fractures, and fatigue. Children less than one year old may have little or no cough and instead have periods when they cannot breathe. The incubation period is usually seven to ten days. Disease may occur in those who have been vaccinated, but symptoms are typically milder.
An upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) is an illness caused by an acute infection, which involves the upper respiratory tract, including the nose, sinuses, pharynx, larynx or trachea. This commonly includes nasal obstruction, sore throat, tonsillitis, pharyngitis, laryngitis, sinusitis, otitis media, and the common cold. Most infections are viral in nature, and in other instances, the cause is bacterial. URTIs can also be fungal or helminthic in origin, but these are less common.
Global health is the health of populations in a worldwide context; it has been defined as "the area of study, research, and practice that places a priority on improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide". Problems that transcend national borders or have a global political and economic impact are often emphasized. Thus, global health is about worldwide health improvement, reduction of disparities, and protection against global threats that disregard national borders, including the most common causes of human death and years of life lost from a global perspective.
The Staphylococcaceae are a family of Gram-positive bacteria that includes the genus Staphylococcus, noted for encompassing several medically significant pathogens.
Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) are a measure of overall disease burden, expressed as the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability, or early death. It was developed in the 1990s as a way of comparing the overall health and life expectancy of different countries.
Acute proliferative glomerulonephritis is a disorder of the small blood vessels of the kidney. It is a common complication of bacterial infections, typically skin infection by Streptococcus bacteria types 12, 4 and 1 (impetigo) but also after streptococcal pharyngitis, for which it is also known as postinfectious glomerulonephritis (PIGN) or poststreptococcal glomerulonephritis (PSGN). It can be a risk factor for future albuminuria. In adults, the signs and symptoms of infection may still be present at the time when the kidney problems develop, and the terms infection-related glomerulonephritis or bacterial infection-related glomerulonephritis are also used. Acute glomerulonephritis resulted in 19,000 deaths in 2013, down from 24,000 deaths in 1990 worldwide.
The Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) is a comprehensive regional and global research program of disease burden that assesses mortality and disability from major diseases, injuries, and risk factors. GBD is a collaboration of over 3600 researchers from 145 countries. Under principal investigator Christopher J.L. Murray, GBD is based in the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Disease burden is the impact of a health problem as measured by financial cost, mortality, morbidity, or other indicators. It is often quantified in terms of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) or disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Both of these metrics quantify the number of years lost due to disability (YLDs), sometimes also known as years lost due to disease or years lived with disability/disease. One DALY can be thought of as one year of healthy life lost, and the overall disease burden can be thought of as a measure of the gap between current health status and the ideal health status. According to an article published in The Lancet in June 2015, low back pain and major depressive disorder were among the top ten causes of YLDs and were the cause of more health loss than diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and asthma combined. The study based on data from 188 countries, considered to be the largest and most detailed analysis to quantify levels, patterns, and trends in ill health and disability, concluded that "the proportion of disability-adjusted life years due to YLDs increased globally from 21.1% in 1990 to 31.2% in 2013." The environmental burden of disease is defined as the number of DALYs that can be attributed to environmental factors. Similarly, the work-related burden of disease is defined as the number of deaths and DALYs that can be attributed to occupational risk factors to human health. These measures allow for comparison of disease burdens, and have also been used to forecast the possible impacts of health interventions. By 2014, DALYs per head were "40% higher in low-income and middle-income regions."
The Bandim Health Project works with population based health research in one of the world's poorest countries, Guinea-Bissau in West Africa.
The Expanded Program on Immunization is a global health initiative launched by the World Health Organization in May 1974, with the aim to make vaccines available to all globally
Katherine "Kate" L. O'Brien is a Canadian American pediatric infectious disease physician, epidemiologist, and vaccinologist who specializes in the areas of pneumococcal epidemiology, pneumococcal vaccine trials and impact studies, and surveillance for pneumococcal disease. She is also known as an expert in infectious diseases in American Indian populations. O’Brien is currently the Director of the World Health Organization's Department of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals.
Global Health Initiatives (GHIs) are humanitarian initiatives that raise and disburse additional funds for infectious diseases – such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria – for immunizations and for strengthening health systems in developing countries. GHIs classify a type of global initiative, which is defined as an organized effort integrating the involvement of organizations, individuals, and stakeholders around the world to address a global issue.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is a public health research institute of the University of Washington in Seattle. Its research fields are global health statistics and impact evaluation.
Dean Tecumseh Jamison is an American economist and leader in the study of global health. He is currently Senior Fellow in Global Health Sciences at University of California, San Francisco and an Emeritus Professor of Global Health at the University of Washington in Seattle. He has published in health economics, global health, education economics, and decision theory.
Simon Iain Hay, is a British epidemiologist. He is Professor for Global Health at the University of Washington and Director of Geospatial Science at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). From 2013-2015 he served as the 52nd President of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
Verbal autopsy (VA) is a method of gathering information about symptoms and circumstances for a deceased individual to determine their cause of death. Health information and a description of events prior to death are acquired from conversations or interviews with a person or persons familiar with the deceased and analyzed by health professionals or computer algorithms to assign likely cause(s) of death.
Peter Salama was an Australian epidemiologist who worked for UNICEF (2002–16) and the World Health Organization (2016–19). He was particularly known for his work at both organisations managing their responses to Ebola epidemics in Africa. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, described him as "a loyal and committed health advocate and multilateralist" who "brought depth and strength to WHO".
Lidia Morawska is a Polish–Australian physicist and distinguished professor at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, at the Queensland University of Technology and director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health (ILAQH) at QUT. She is also co-director of the Australia-China Centre for Air Quality Science and Management, an adjunct professor at the Jinan University in China, and a Vice-Chancellor fellow at the Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. Her work focuses on fundamental and applied research in the interdisciplinary field of air quality and its impact on human health, with a specific focus on atmospheric fine, ultrafine and nanoparticles. Since 2003, she expanded her interests to include also particles from human respiration activities and airborne infection transmission.
Nina Schwalbe is an American public health researcher who is the founder of Spark Street Advisors, a public health think tank based in New York City. Schwalbe specializes in vaccines. She has previously worked at Gavi, UNICEF and USAID.
Rita V. Krishnamurthi is a New Zealand academic, and since 2023 is a full professor at the Auckland University of Technology, specialising in the epidemiology of stroke and dementia.