Vision, mission, values, and principles

Our values

At IHME, our values are at the core of how we treat each other. From our research methods to our organizational culture, we strive to embody these values in everything we do.

• Respect: Regardless of role, tenure, or identity, we treat everyone that we work with, collaborate with, and encounter with professionalism and integrity.
• Transparency: We value open communication to promote participation and accountability in all aspects of our work.
• Global mindset: We communicate credible research that empowers those in leadership roles to influence multicultural individuals, groups, and organizations across the world.
• Antidiscrimination: We actively counter all forms of discrimination and unfair treatment of someone based on their sex, race, age, disability, religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and all other identities and highlight such through our research and organizational policies and practices. 
• Integrity: We will be honest even when not in our interest and operate with strong moral principles. 
• Innovation: We challenge assumptions, make improvements, develop ideas, and anticipate change.

Our principles

Our principles hold us accountable to putting our values into practice every day. These principles guide us as we work to achieve our mission.

• Scientific excellence: Because everyone deserves to live a long life in full health, better evidence of what works and what doesn’t is needed to help society achieve this goal. Sound evidence must come from rigorous measurement and adhere to the principles of scientific inquiry. To that end, above all else, we pursue excellence in scientific advancement aimed at improving population health.
• Policy relevance: We will measure what is important for guiding health policy, not just what is easy to measure. To better guide health policy, we make our findings comparable across time and populations using the most recent data available, and we provide information at the most local area of measurement possible.
• Impartiality: For health evidence to be useful, it also must be credible, generated by a scientific process unimpeded by political, financial, or other types of interference. IHME was created to fill a gap in global health: to separate the measurement and evaluation of health policies and programs from the process of creating, implementing, and advocating for policies and programs.
• Collaboration: To help people live longer lives in better health worldwide, we work with a broad network of researchers, statisticians, and policymakers, following a science-based, collaborative approach. We also foster a transparent and constructive dialogue and debate about all aspects of health measurement.
• Knowledge sharing: Because health improvement often starts from within communities, we invite the public to help us interpret our results and advance health metrics and evaluation through reports, policy discussions, data visualizations, and other activities. We also believe it is crucial to cultivate the next generation of leaders in health metrics and evaluation through educational programs, trainings, and mentoring.