Gates gives $105 million to University of Washington for health research

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest charitable fund, gave $105 million to create a health-research institute at the University of Washington.

The institute will conduct evaluations of health programs worldwide, the Seattle-based Gates Foundation said today in a statement on its Web site. The university's main campus is also in Seattle.

The new Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation will collect and analyze data on health trends, conduct evaluations of individual health programs' effectiveness and make the data available to policymakers, researchers and the public. The institute will also offer fellowships to train junior researchers.

"Health policy must be based on evidence, not speculation," said Tachi Yamada, the president of the Gates Foundation's Global Health Program. "With high-quality data, we can ensure resources go where they are needed most, and dramatically improve health care delivery."

The donation is the largest private gift in the school's history, Mark Emmert, the president of the university, said in the statement. The university, which has established a Department of Global Health, will contribute an additional $20 million to the project, Gates officials said.

Christopher Murray, a health economist appointed last month to the faculty of the university's School of Medicine, will direct the institute, Gates officials said. Murray, an epidemiologist, directed Harvard University's Initiative for Global Health, based in Boston. He is also a former senior official at the World Health Organization, in Geneva.

Julio Frenk, Mexico's former health minister, will chair the institute's board. Frenk, a senior fellow at the foundation, said the institute will work with partners such as the WHO, which is sponsoring a project to improve nations' information systems for handling heath-related data.