Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg backs health-data push

Monday, March 23, 2015

Philanthropic foundation, Australia to aid improved collection of health and mortality figures in 20 countries

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on public-health causes from battling smoking to reducing traffic-related deaths. Now he is putting millions more into a project that is far more low-key but one that he calls vital: collecting basic health data.

Bloomberg Philanthropies, the billionaire entrepreneur’s philanthropic foundation, and the Australian government are launching a $100 million, four-year effort to help 20 African, Southeast Asian and Latin American countries learn more about the lives and deaths of their peoples. The initiative will pay for new tools and systems to improve birth- and death-registration systems and help the countries gather more information on risk factors for premature deaths.

Roughly two-thirds of all deaths in the world—about 35 million a year—are unrecorded, according to the World Health Organization. And about three-quarters of the death certificates that are written list only general causes of death, meaning that public-health leaders often don’t know for sure what diseases people may be dying of prematurely, according to Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Collecting data is scarcely as high profile as taking on tobacco companies, which Mr. Bloomberg is also doing. But Mr. Bloomberg said it is at the core of his philosophy of public-health philanthropy.

“You have to have some real numbers to know whether you’re making progress,” he said in an interview. “Unless you know what’s going on, it’s kind of hard to attack problems; you don’t even know which problems to attack.”

Australia’s government, which provides development aid across the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean region, views improved data collection as a way to help developing countries strengthen their health systems, Julie Bishop, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, said in an email sent through a spokesman. Australia is donating $15 million over the next two years to the initiative.

“Without knowing what is driving premature death in a country, policy makers, leaders and service providers cannot respond effectively,” she said.

Australia has been investing for years in helping Papua New Guinea improve its health systems, for example, she said. There is a “critical need” there “for accurate birth rates to determine population growth…as well as to understand the true nature and extent of maternal deaths.”

The money will be used both to help countries improve the registrations of births and deaths, and to collect information on risk factors that cause heart disease and other noncommunicable conditions, such as smoking and poor nutrition, said Kelly Henning, who head’s Bloomberg Philanthropies’ public health programs. The aim is to find fast, inexpensive ways to collect such data such as through mobile phones, rather than through surveys done in person by going house to house, she said.

“House to house surveys are fabulous but we need to find better, cheaper, faster ways,” she said.

House to house surveys are “extremely time intensive—especially in remote regions that are often in urgent need of improved health services,” Ms. Bishop said. “Our program will help countries explore ways to collect data using mobile phones and other technology, which is faster and cheaper, and will allow them to update data much more frequently.”

 

wsj.com