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Study reveals scale and scope of Washington state global health initiatives

November 19, 2009 | By Michael McCarthy More

A study assessing the scope and scale of global health activities in Washington state has found that the initiatives of just nine organizations involve nearly 500 programs in 92 countries.

WGHA big map

The study, called the Global Health Strategic Mapping Project, also found that the global health activities of these nine organizations alone generated employment for 2,323 full-time equivalents in the state and another 2,150 outside of the state, for a total of 4,470 full-time equivalents.

Global Health in Seattle

In addition, the organizations’ work involved partnerships with nearly 600 organizations worldwide, including 244 universities and hospitals, 84 government agencies, 60 corporations as well as foundations, multilateral organizations and non-governmental organizations, the study found.

The findings show that the state has become “a nexus for global health,” said Lisa Cohen, director of the Washington Global Health Alliance, a nonprofit which works to support global health efforts in the state and which commissioned the study.

The study also identified more than 160 senior investigators and project managers working in these organizations with expertise ranging from immunology to genomics to biostatistics to drug discovery to international program development.

The study, which was conducted by the consulting firm Berk & Associates, catalogued the work of nine of the Alliance’s members:

The study did not look at the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest foundation which invests substanital resources in global health, nor the activities of the state’s many relief organizations, such as World Vision, one of the world’s largest non-governmental organizations.

Cohen said the Alliance hopes to add the activities of these and other organizations in the state to the analysis in the future. All told there are nearly 200 organizations of various sizes in the state that work in the area of global health, she said.

The results of the study were presented at panel discussion Wednesday night hosted by the Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association, as the first of its four-session Domesticating Global Health series.

WBBA President Chris Rivera said that the study, by demonstrating the size of global health activities in Washington, should help boost the state’s life-sciences sector. The map, he said, “should help communicate the competitive advantage of the state.”