Disease burden estimates vary, sometimes greatly, depending on who is providing the estimate. On November 15th, two UW Department of Global Health START students and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation staff presented their recent work to unpack the drivers of the differences in the global disease burden estimates for pneumonia and diarrhea. Over the past year, the foundation's Pneumonia/Enhanced Diarrheal Disease Measurement Learning and Evaluation team and colleagues, together with UW START, have investigated these differences resulting in important findings and recommendations. This presentation gave an overview of the “drivers of the differences,” facilitated engagement amongst foundation staff on strategies to better understand estimates. On October 10th, the foundation hosted a successful convening of experts to explore IHME and WHO/CHERG approaches to estimation and modeling mortality of childhood deaths using the team’s work as a starting point. By further understanding differences in disease burden estimates, experts and local health agencies can better allocate resources to address specific types of pneumonia and diarrhea.
The START Program serves to train and increase the capacity of University of Washington students to engage in relevant and applied research in real world settings. The goal is to provide practical experience-based learning opportunities for students who engage in research in response to specific requests from the Gates Foundation’s program teams. The START Program also provides high quality analysis and research support to specific research requests from program teams in the foundation.
Students conduct research and receive mentorship from faculty and staff with expertise in global health, epidemiology, business, sociology, and other relevant disciplines. The foundation funds faculty/staff time and the equivalent of a research assistant position for graduate students to conduct research projects.
START is a program within the foundation’s Global Analysis and Research Program (GARP). Current GARP partnerships are with UW’s Foster School of Business, Department of Global Health, Evans School of Public Affairs, and College of Education.