Tracking what works and what we have to fix
Our Life’s Most Wanted analytics team will produce public reports connecting the world’s leading causes of human death to their most effective solutions.
We’ll highlight the leading organizations working on each problem, and identify the projects and research initiatives that have the best chance of making big improvements.
This analysis will inform all our other operations, inspiring connections and best practices between and among our projects.
Project brief
Life’s Most Wanted is exploring public reports that connect major causes of death and disability with effective, underfunded responses. A credible report must look beyond raw death counts: age, disability, preventability, inequity, geography, evidence quality, cost, and affected communities all change what action is appropriate. The project will publish methods and uncertainty rather than present a single ranking as objective truth.
Working principles
- Use comparable public data, cite every claim, version the analysis, and distinguish estimates from observed counts.
- Include disability and healthy life—not only mortality—and show how burdens differ across populations.
- Evaluate interventions and funding gaps separately; a large problem does not automatically imply a tractable program.
Organizations and resources to learn from
These independent links are starting points for research. They are not endorsements, funding recommendations, or claims of partnership.
- WHO Global Health Observatory — country and global health indicators from the World Health Organization
- IHME Global Burden of Disease — comparative estimates of mortality, disability, and risk factors
- Our World in Data — accessible charts, context, and reusable health data
Near-term milestones
- Publish a methods note defining outcomes, data versions, uncertainty, equity lenses, and decision criteria.
- Release one reproducible pilot report with downloadable data and an independent expert review.
- Add intervention evidence and organizations only after separating burden, effectiveness, and funding need.
Current status
Research and relationship-building. Lifeco is not yet operating a field program under this project.
How to help
We are looking for epidemiologists, biostatisticians, health economists, data engineers, clinicians, disability and equity researchers, and clear visual communicators. If that is you, contact Lifeco and mention this project.