International development data · Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington

Global Health Data Exchange

IHME's free catalog of health-related surveys, censuses, vital statistics and Global Burden of Disease data sources.

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The Global Health Data Exchange (GHDx) is a data catalog maintained by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent research center at the University of Washington. It indexes the source data used in IHME's Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, including surveys, censuses, vital registration systems, administrative health records and financial data, searchable by keyword, geography, data type and year. It also hosts downloadable prepackaged results files from GBD and related IHME studies, such as disability weights and cause-mapping documentation. GHDx is used by epidemiologists, health ministries and development researchers who need citation-level provenance for global health estimates rather than raw microdata, which for some source surveys is instead held by the original data-collecting agency.

At a glance

Vendor Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington
Pricing model Free
Free tier Yes
Deployment Cloud
Open source No
Best for Epidemiologists and health-policy researchers needing traceable global health data provenance and GBD outputs.

Pricing

Free catalog and data downloads, maintained by IHME as part of the Global Burden of Disease study.

Pricing has not been verified yet — see the vendor's site.

Features

  • Searchable catalog of health surveys, censuses and vital statistics worldwide
  • Citations and provenance for all Global Burden of Disease (GBD) data inputs
  • Downloadable prepackaged GBD results files
  • Disability weights, cause-ICD code maps and other GBD documentation
  • Search by keyword, location, data type and year
  • Linked Sources Tool listing input sources used in IHME research

Profile last reviewed September 21, 2026

Alternatives

The DHS Program USAID-backed program of nationally representative household health surveys across nearly 100 low- and middle-income countries. World Bank Microdata Library World Bank catalog of free household-survey and administrative microdata from developing countries worldwide. UNICEF Data UNICEF's statistical portal of internationally comparable child-related indicators for nearly 200 countries.

Global Health Data Exchange in the index now

Terms to know

Data catalog A searchable inventory of an organization's data assets, with descriptions, ownership and usage attached. Data provenance The documented history of where a dataset came from and every transformation applied to it before its current state.

Related guides

Where to find international development data Free sources for aid finance, health surveys, food security, and humanitarian data differ in whether they collect data or just catalog it.