Statement from Vital Strategies on Bloomberg Philanthropies’ announcement of a $120 million reinvestment to expand its Data for Health Initiative:
“Since its inception four years ago, the Data for Health Initiative, under Michael Bloomberg’s leadership, has played a transformational role in helping governments harness the power of data to help people lead healthier, longer lives. We applaud Bloomberg Philanthropies for continuing the critical work of its Data for Health Initiative through a $120 million reinvestment,” said Jose Luis Castro, President and Chief Executive Officer at Vital Strategies.
“The importance of this initiative is twofold,” he continued. “First is to build upon advances in data collection systems and technology which now make it possible to count every human life, and second is in ensuring that governments worldwide are using available data to enhance public health policymaking. With this renewed support, Vital Strategies is thrilled to continue our partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies and national governments to count the uncounted and support evidence-based decision-making, with the potential to improve health outcomes for billions.”
Adam Karpati, M.D., MPH, Senior Vice President leading the Data for Health and other public health programs at Vital Strategies, said: “Lack of quality data disproportionately affects low- and middle-income countries, which are home to the lion’s share of the nearly 30 million deaths and over 50 million births that go unrecorded each year. Without high-quality data of this nature, policymakers lack a clear picture of demographic trends or causes of death and disease in their countries, effectively hampering decision-making about how to direct resources. Even where health data is available, it too often remains unused despite its potential to guide critical policy or investment decisions. With the expansion of the Data for Health initiative, Vital Strategies will accelerate strategies such as the establishment of population-based cancer registries, which will help select countries track cancer data and use this resource to better understand the burden of and form effective responses to prevailing cancers within their borders.”
“While the global health community is calling for attention to this issue, Bloomberg Philanthropies has played a transformational role in providing national governments innovative and proven data collection methods, support to build robust systems for monitoring public health data, and fuel for tracking progress against numerous UN Sustainable Development Goals,” Dr. Karpati concluded.
For more information on the Data for Health initiative, visit: https://www.bloomberg.org/program/public-health/data-health/#overview
About Vital Strategies’ work in the Data for Health initiative:
Vital Strategies conducts its Data for Health work through multiple programs. The Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Program assists governments in strengthening their systems for counting every birth and death and for monitoring the causes of death; the Data Impact Program supports governments to maximize the use of data to enhance public health policymaking and decision-making. In addition, the Vital Strategies Data for Health team provides assistance to governments in establishing and strengthening cancer registries.
https://www.vitalstrategies.org/programs/data-impact/
https://www.vitalstrategies.org/programs/civil-registration-and-vital-statistics/
About Vital Strategies
Vital Strategies is a global health organization that believes every person should be protected by a strong public health system. We work with governments and civil society in 73 countries to design and implement evidence-based strategies that tackle their most pressing public health problems. Our goal is to see governments adopt promising interventions at scale as rapidly as possible.
To find out more, please visit vstrategystage.wpengine.com or Twitter @VitalStrat.
Media Contact: Christina Honeysett: choneysett@vitalstrategies.org