The world ranking is a topic in many areas as the world goes global. There are the top 500 rakings of companies, rankings on DGP and competency of the nations, rankings of the universities, billionaires, so on and so forth.
It was just last year that I noticed that there was such thing as the ranking of think tanks. The list I found was based on the study by the University of Pennsylvania.
It came as a big surprise to us when we discovered in 2009 that our Health and Global Policy Institute (HGPI) (founded in 2004, originally named as Health Policy Institute but changed to current name in 2011) was ranked in the Top 10 (Ref.1 P.42) in the field of Health Policy. The list included Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, RAND, and other institutions known to the world as the first class policy institutes.
I wondered what this year’s ranking would be since I have thought that the result of 2009 might have been some sort of a mistake. So, as we were preparing for the annual Health Summit to be held in February, I had some concern about the evaluation for 2010. However, it turned out that our institution was again among the Top 10 (Ref.1 p.34&35). I don’t want to boast, but this is truly a great achievement.
The number of think tanks completely independent from government organizations is still small outside the United States or Great Britain. I would like to express my deep appreciation and thanks to all the people who supported our activities and the staffs who did a great job at our institution.