The Gates Foundation broke its own record at the University of Washington with the largest charitable gift in university history: $540.2 million for the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
The commitment, announced Monday, will fund a 10-year expansion of IHME’s Global Burden of Disease study, increasing the number of locations it covers from about 925 to nearly 5,000. For many countries, the study is the only source of comparable data on causes of death and disease, according to IHME.
It will also support the institute’s health forecasting and its tracking of health spending worldwide.
The funding “will allow us to provide high-quality evidence at a much more local level and help leaders understand not only where health is improving or worsening, but which decisions can make the greatest difference for people,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, IHME’s director and a professor of health metrics sciences at UW, in a statement announcing the grant.
IHME became widely known during the COVID-19 pandemic, when its projections of cases, hospitalizations and deaths were used by the White House task force and cited around the world. It drew criticism from statisticians who said its early forecasts understated the U.S. death toll and that its uncertainty ranges were too narrow, prompting revisions by IHME.
The Gates Foundation helped create IHME at UW in 2007 with a $105 million grant, then the largest in UW history. It has repeatedly set UW’s donation record since then, including $210 million in 2016 for the building that now houses the institute and $279 million to IHME in 2017.
IHME gets about 60% of its funding from the foundation, Murray told The Seattle Times. The rest comes from federal grants, projects with other countries and other philanthropies.
The latest grant comes as global health funding falls sharply. IHME’s own tracking found that development assistance for health dropped 21% between 2024 and 2025, driven by a 67% decline in U.S. spending. Britain, France and Germany also cut their contributions.
It also comes at a tough moment for UW, which is facing a budget crisis driven by funding cuts. KUOW reported in April that NIH award money promised to UW dropped 50% from fiscal 2025 to fiscal 2026, with funds in hand down 74% because of slow federal grant processing.
The foundation is going through a transition of its own. It announced in May 2025 that it would spend $200 billion over 20 years and close on Dec. 31, 2045. Its board approved a record $9 billion budget for 2026 and a plan to cut up to 500 of its roughly 2,375 staff positions by 2030.
A 10-year grant to IHME would run out about a decade before the foundation closes.
