A conversation with the University of Melbourne on the Bloomberg Data for Health Initiative
Join us for our inaugural first BMC Medicine Forum event on May 11th in New York City. The session will also be live streamed via video conference in our London offices.
The free event is open to researchers, practitioners, and scholarly authors in the fields of medicine and global health — spaces are limited, so be sure to register here for the NYC in-person event and here to watch the video-conference with our colleagues in London.
The event will cover:
- What is the Bloomberg Data for Health Initiative?
- How can we improve and promote the use of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) systems?
- Why is it important to improve the quality and use of data on causes of death in lower- to middle-income countries?
- How do CRVS support the Sustainable Development Goals?
- What are some specific interventions of the Initiative?
- How does the Initiative help build local capacity for data collection and use?
- …and much more, including current challenges, recent progress, and future directions
Event details:
Date: Friday May 11th, 2018
Time: 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM (Eastern Daylight Time)
Location: Springer Nature/BMC, Mercer Room, 1 New York Plaza, New York City
Live Video Conference in London:
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
Location: Springer Nature/BMC, Faraday Room, GLLG05 Glasshouse Building, 2 Trematon Walk, N1 9FN, London
Light refreshments will be provided.
Register for the free event in NYC!
Register for the live video conference in London!
Read more about the forum and its esteemed speakers below. We look forward to seeing you there!
Despite their critical importance for guiding health policy and practice, data on births, deaths and causes of death are still poorly collected, poorly understood and poorly used in the majority of countries. The University of Melbourne, along with other implementation partners, has been leading the Bloomberg Data for Health Initiative, a global initiative to improve the availability, quality and use of data on causes of death in selected countries since 2015. The overall aim of the Initiative (due to conclude in early 2019) is to strengthen Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) systems, and their data outputs, based on advances in population health science and IT, and promote their use in national and subnational policy dialogue. This is particularly germane for the SDGs: CRVS is either a direct or indirect contributor for 70% of SDGs and up to 40% of SDG Targets; it is essential for SDG monitoring, contributing numerators and denominators to nearly 30% of all indicators. Additionally, achieving birth and death registration is itself either an explicit SDG target or is essential to the attainment of a target. This session will introduce the Initiative, and focus on challenges, progress and expected outcomes for the three key substantive interventions, namely improving the accuracy of cause of death certification in hospitals, applying automated verbal autopsy along with innovative death notification strategies to identify leading causes of home deaths, and strengthening country capacity to critically appraise data quality for development.
Moderated by Renata Schiavo, PhD, MA, CCL, Chief Editor, BMC Medicine
PANELISTS
Professor Alan Lopez AC FAHMS, FAFPHM, PhD, MSc, BSC (Hons), Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne. Professor Alan Lopez is a Melbourne Laureate Professor and the Rowden-White Chair of Global Health and Burden of Disease Measurement at The University of Melbourne. He is the Director of the Global Burden of Disease Group at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, visiting Professor and Director of the IHME-Big Data Institute Unit at Oxford University and an Affiliate Professor of Global Health at the University of Washington.
Professor Lopez co-founded the seminal Global Burden of Disease Study and more recently, has led the global initiative to improve the registration and certification of births, deaths and causes of death to guide global and national investments for health development.
A highly cited author and researcher with over 120,000 citations to his work, his publications have received worldwide acclaim for their importance and influence in health and medical research. In 2015 he was ranked among the top 10 most influential scientists in the world by Thompson Reuters and awarded the prestigious Gairdner Award in 2018.
Dr Rasika Rampatige, MBBS, MSc, MD. Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne. A dedicated and highly motivated public health epidemiologist with over 17 years’ experience working with health systems in developing countries. Her primary areas of expertise include health systems and health information systems research and implementation work. Rasika has extensive experience working with leaders in the field of public health surveillance and has a strong commitment to developing country capacities to strengthen civil and vital registration systems. Rasika has developed many innovative strategies to help countries to improve their mortality statistics systems across interventions for improving the accuracy of cause of death certification in hospitals, applying automated verbal autopsy along with innovative death notification strategies to identify leading causes of home deaths.
Associate Professor Deirdre McLaughlin, MAPS, PhD, BBehSc, BSc (Hons). Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne; Adjunct Associate Professor, The University of Queensland. Deputy Director of the Initiative and is responsible for the effective rollout of all technical interventions for the Initiative. She works closely with the senior technical advisory leads and with the technical working groups which have been developed to provide a resource that countries can draw upon for advice based on high-quality empirical evidence. Her areas of interest include assessing the impact of interventions, planning for sustainability, capacity building and targeting often overlooked populations, such as those living in rural and remote areas. She has considerable experience in administrative datasets and the utility of linking and using these to benefit populations and provide evidence for health policy development for government and other relevant stakeholders.
Dr Lene Mikkelsen, PhD, MSc. Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne. Senior Technical Advisor to the Bloomberg Data for Health Initiative and a staff member at the University of Melbourne. She worked for 23 years with the United Nations in Geneva and Bangkok in senior statistical and managerial roles. She also was a Technical Advisory to the Health Metrics Network in WHO and was a senior consultant in vital statistics to the Health Information Systems Knowledge Hub at the University of Queensland from 2009-2013. She is the author of numerous publications and tools on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics including the widely-used CRVS Rapid and Comprehensive Assessment Tools, and is the author and technical expert behind ANACONDA, the electronic tool that countries can use to access the accuracy and completeness of their mortality and cause of death data.
