Participating Institutions

National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales
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The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) is a premier research institution in Australia and is recognised internationally as a Research Centre of Excellence. The Centre is multidisciplinary and collaborates with medicine, psychology, social science and other schools of the University of NSW, as well as with a range of other institutions and individuals in Australia and overseas.

The overall mission of NDARC is to conduct high quality research and related activities that increases the effectiveness of Australian and International treatment and other intervention responses to alcohol and other drug related harm.

NDARC will be providing information on the burden of disease associated with illicit drugs. NDARC is also currently involved in several international projects examining the epidemiology of drug use and dependence, and related problems, across the globe. These include involvement with the WHO’s World Mental Health Survey Initiative, the Secretariat to the Reference Group advising the United Nations on Injecting Drug use and HIV, and the current Global Burden of Disease project.

The University of Queensland
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The University of Queensland has established itself as one of its region’s leading centers for public health research and teaching. The school aims to improve population health in Australia and throughout the world by researching key and emerging issues in public health, forging strategic partnerships, and preparing the public health leaders of tomorrow through the pursuit of academic excellence.

Programs at the School cover international health, public health, health studies (including addiction studies and clinical epidemiology), nutrition, indigenous health, tropical health, biostatistics, and population health and health promotion.

The school has created a center of excellence in burden research - The Center for Burden of Disease and Cost-Effectiveness. This center has attracted research from both Australian and global burden studies and is in the unique position to deliver high quality burden and cost-effectiveness projects and also offer high quality training on all aspects of burden methodology.

Harvard University
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The Harvard University component is primarily based at the Harvard Initiative for Global Health (HIGH) and the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.

HIGH is an interdisciplinary faculty initiative, with the founding goal to support and expand global health education, training, and research across Harvard University. It supports a number of large research projects and includes faculty and researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. The Center for Population and Development Studies was the original home of the Burden of Disease Unit, which played a key role in formulating the first set of burden estimates and the underlying analytics.

The key investigators on this project have extensive experience in developing, implementing, and managing research programs on global health challenges and working in a diverse array of developing countries. This experience includes design and implementation of the World Health Surveys and the earlier Global Burden of Disease Study and the Comparative Risk Assessment Study, as well as their national applications. These projects have all involved collaboration with experts and institutions across a wide range of countries, including numerous ones in the developing world.

Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington
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The team at the University of Washington includes faculty members and staff from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. The Institute sits within both the School of Medicine and the School of Public Health and Community Medicine. The University of Washington builds on a long history of research and service projects worldwide.

The mission of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is to monitor global health conditions and health systems, as well as to evaluate interventions, initiatives, and reforms. The Institute will provide high quality and timely information on health so that policymakers, researchers, donors, practitioners, local decision-makers, and others can better allocate limited resources to achieve optimal results.

Teams of researchers will guide the work of the Institute in conjunction with a central management team. Together, they will implement research, education, and evaluation activities that are robust and relevant to existing global needs and emerging challenges. To develop the cadre of young researchers needed to sustain the efforts in each topical area, the Institute supports a post-bachelor and a post-doctoral fellows program.

Johns Hopkins University
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The Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is committed to understanding the health problems of people in developing countries and underserved areas of the United States. As the oldest and largest department of international health in the world, it is uniquely equipped to develop affordable ways of protecting and improving health through health services and behavioral changes.

The key investigators on this project have extensive experience in developing, implementing, and managing programs and research on global health challenges, serving on international reference groups related to child survival and HIV/AIDS, and working in a diverse array of developing countries. Collectively, the project team at Johns Hopkins offers expertise in epidemiology, infectious disease control and program evaluation, with wide-ranging experience in country collaboration and capacity building.

World Health Organization
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The World Health Organization, the United Nations’ specialized agency for health, was established in 1948. WHO’s objective, as set out in its constitution, is the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health. Health is defined in WHO’s constitution as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

WHO is governed by 193 Member States through the World Health Assembly. The Health Assembly is composed of representatives from WHO’s Member States. The main tasks of the World Health Assembly are to approve the WHO program and the budget for the following biennium and to decide major policy questions. WHO’s Secretariat is staffed by several thousand health professionals, other experts and support staff working at headquarters in Geneva, and in the regions. There are six regional offices and well over 100 country offices. Country offices are well-equipped to facilitate country work through their close links with the government and extensive network of partners.

WHO’s role in public health not only focuses on setting global norms and standards, but also contributes significantly to innovation in health, particularly through multi-country studies. WHO has an important comparative advantage over any health research organization in the world: it is able to combine standardized research in multi-country studies with its capacity to draw upon the prime intellectual resources anywhere in the world, and then translate research findings into public health policy priorities.

The work for the Global Burden of Disease Study will be located in the Evidence and Information for Health Policy (EIP) cluster in WHO. The Department of Measurement and Health Information Systems (MHI) aims to provide information on epidemiology and the burden of disease. It produces the World Health Statistics and holds the central databases on health statistics and on causes of death as reported by countries. It is also responsible for development of estimates of cause-specific mortality, incidence and prevalence of diseases, injuries and disability, and summary measures of population health.