Prestigious Honor for UW Medicine Global Health Researcher

By UW Medicine

Professors Christopher Murray and Alan Lopez, co-founders of the groundbreaking Global Burden of Disease Study, will receive the John Dirks Canada Gairdner Global Health Award.  It is one of the world’s most esteemed prizes for health research. 

Murray directs the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.  Lopez is a laureate professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia. 

NPR: People Are Living Longer in Places You Wouldn't Expect

By Emily Sohn

Where can people expect to live the longest?

The answer to that question is usually pretty predictable and often dependent on wealth: People generally live longer in richer countries. Like Japan and Switzerland, where average life expectancies exceed 83 years.

In lower income countries, expected years of life are often far shorter — hovering below 55 in a number of sub-Saharan countries, including Chad, Mozambique and Sierra Leone.

The Guardian: Poor Diet is a Factor in One in Five Deaths, Global Disease Study Reveals

By Sarah Boseley

Poor diet is a factor in one in five deaths around the world, according to the most comprehensive study ever carried out on the subject.

Millions of people are eating the wrong sorts of food for good health. Eating a diet that is low in whole grains, fruit, nuts and seeds and fish oils and high in salt raises the risk of an early death, according to the huge and ongoing study Global Burden of Disease.

Discover Magazine: Quantifying the Burden of Global Disease

By Joanne Silberner

Later this month, global health luminaries will gather in Seattle to celebrate the anniversary of a relationship that had a rocky start back in 1986, when a brash young Rhodes scholar marched into the World Health Organization office of an epidemiologist who had published research papers on mortality in Africa.

“Are you Alan Lopez?” the visitor asked. “Yes,” Lopez remembers answering. “Well, I’m Chris Murray, and everything you’ve written about Africa is wrong.”

The Post Star: U.S. is Not a Global Health Care Leader

By Kathleen Phalen-Tomaselli

For Vancouver filmmakers Ronan Reinart and Kate Twa, all medically necessary health care is covered by their government’s single-payer Medical Services Plan, the provincial program that covers health-care benefits for British Columbia residents.

“We pay a small monthly premium — in our case, around $100 for two — which is determined by income, and low-income folks don’t pay any premium,” Reinart said. “Elective and non-necessary procedures we pay for, but there may be tax deductions for many of these.”

The Hill: We Can’t Cure the Opioid Epidemic If It’s Not Treated As a Health Crisis

By Christopher J.L. Murray

We’re living with a virus-like disease sweeping our nation. Nearly every community is affected. The rates of death rise year after year. Between 1990 and 2015, the percentages of death more than quadrupled. We lost more people than the population of Pittsburgh. 

It’s the second-leading killer of men in their thirties, making the disease an even bigger threat to their health than being murdered with firearms. 

This killer sweeping the nation: opioid use.

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Common Dreams: Global Study Shows Americans Dying from Preventable Causes at Shocking Rates

By Nika Knight

Americans are dying at a shockingly high rate from preventable causes, found a first-of-its-kind global health study published late Thursday.

The new research demonstrates that despite the fact that the U.S. has the largest economy in the world, healthcare for many of its residents is woefully inadequate. The U.S. was tied with Estonia and Montenegro, far below other wealthy nations such as Norway, Canada, and Australia, in the study's ranking of 195 countries.

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