Dr. Christopher Murray is the director of the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and professor of Global Health at the UW School of Medicine and School of Public Health and Community Medicine. In this program, he evaluates the performance of national medical care and public health systems. A physician and health economist, Dr. Murray's early work focused on tuberculosis control and developing a new metric to compare death and disability from various diseases and the contribution of risk factors to the overall burden of disease in developing and developed countries. This pioneering effort has been hailed as a major landmark in public health and an important foundation for policy formulation. From 2003 until 2007, he was the director of the Harvard University Initiative for Global Health.  (Series: 2007 Distinguished Faculty Lecture with Christopher Murray)