The 2004 Eugene Garfield Economic Impact on Medical and Health Research Award goes to Dr. Sherry Glied.

On October 19, Research!America’s Board of Directors honored Sherry Glied, PhD, professor and chair of the Division of Health Policy and Management of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, with the 2004 Eugene Garfield Economic Impact of Medical and Health Research Award for her research on the value of child mortality reductions.

Sherry A.M. Glied, PhD

Accepting her award in a ceremony held at Hogan & Hartson in Washington, DC, Glied presented her paper “The Value of Reductions in Child Injury Mortality in the U.S.,” which found that advances in child mortality prevention research and increased access to child health information for parents contribute significantly to the reduction of child mortality and translate into economy-wide savings of $7 to $16 billion per year.

“How do you measure the value of a child?” asked Eugene Garfield, PhD, president and editor-in-chief of The Scientist, inventor of the science citation indexing system and the award’s benefactor. “Proving the economic impact of medical research is not simple,” said Garfield speaking about the award. “Thank goodness someone had looked at this issue [of child mortality,]” he said of Glied.

C. Everett Koop, MD, former U.S. surgeon general, also congratulated Glied in video remarks and called for further investment in research innovation because the “treatments of today can’t be the treatments of tomorrow.” Jordan J. Cohen, MD, president, Association of American Medical Colleges and chair of the award’s selection committee, and The Honorable Paul G. Rogers, board chair, Research!America, attended the ceremony. According to Rogers, the Eugene Garfield Economic Impact of Medical and Health Research Award has become increasingly important in telling the story of the economic impact of research.

Jordan Cohen, MD (l), Award Selection
Committee chair, and Eugene Garfield, PhD (r), award founder and sponsor, honored Sherry Glied, PhD, at an award reception in Washington, DC.

Glied's research chronicled the history of child mortality in society from the late 1950s, when childcare manuals advocated nothing more than maternal vigilance, to the present age of child safety belts, electrical plug outlet covers and non-flammable children’s clothes. According to Glied, rising child mortality rates made it evident that “vigilance” was not enough

Since the 1960s, as more mothers entered the work force, child mortality continued to decline, leading Glied to conclude that parents’ time is increasingly less relevant in producing child health. The decline in child mortality rates is due to advances in prevention research, development of safety products and increased access to scientific information, Glied found. “We needed to change the way we thought about child mortality,” she said.

Glied’s work exploring alternative explanations for declining child mortality rates also appears in Chapter 13 of Medical Care Output and Productivity edited by David M. Cutler, PhD, and Ernst R. Berndt