The Population and Reproductive Health program works to slow population growth in high fertility areas of the world and to enhance and protect women’s reproductive health and reproductive rights, especially for marginalized and disadvantaged girls, women, and communities. Access to voluntary, quality family planning services and comprehensive reproductive health services empowers women and couples to fulfill their reproductive desires and helps to achieve a broad range of positive health and development outcomes. Enabling women to manage their fertility improves the health of women and families and contributes to slowing population growth. Nearly one-third of maternal deaths, for example, are from pregnancies that were unintended.
The relationship between population growth and economic development and poverty is complex; however a significant and growing body of evidence identifies investments in family planning and reproductive health as key to addressing poverty and achieving economic development at the individual, household and national level.
Successful family planning and reproductive health programs are comprehensive and address supply and demand side issues. Effective efforts address delivery of services, supplies and information, along with initiatives to overcome social, cultural, economic and political barriers. Demand-side efforts include:
- Working with young people, women, families and communities to enhance understanding of pregnancy risk to women
- Addressing fears of the potential side effects of contraceptives
- Mitigating social and political opposition to family planning
- Promoting positive social and cultural norms that support women’s health and rights.
Long-term success is built on consistent demand and a supportive cultural environment for family planning and reproductive health services, rights and choices.
During the last decade, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation invested primarily in the supply side of family planning and reproductive health. Because we now know that demand-side issues represent approximately 70 percent of the barriers to family planning and reproductive health advances in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the Population and Reproductive Health program has adjusted its strategic focus. We work in partnership with grantee organizations and other stakeholders to achieve four objectives:
- Promote and advance family planning and reproductive health on the global, regional and national development agendas.
- Develop and share innovative models for delivering family planning and reproductive health information and services, especially those models that effectively reach young people and underserved women.
- Address root causes of reproductive health outcomes and population growth, especially through targeted investments in the education and empowerment of girls ages 12 to 18.
- Enhance reproductive rights, including by improving the quality and availability of safe abortion and/or post-abortion care.
We support work toward these four objectives in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the United States and also through grantmaking at the Global level in advocacy and leadership development for family planning and reproductive health.
Under this new strategy, we now operate with a regional framework that includes sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. We have increased attention to the education and empowerment of girls between the ages of 12 and 18 years through investments linked to the specific aim of delaying marriage and first pregnancy. In addition, our new strategy includes an emphasis on investing in women’s organizations and engaging women leaders as champions for family planning and reproductive health and rights. Finally, we are focused on using more of our resources to catalyze innovation and learning within the field.
