The Population and Reproductive Health program funds innovative work that addresses population growth and promotes positive reproductive health. Our goals are to slow population growth rates in high-fertility areas, and to ensure individual reproductive health and rights in order to improve the quality of life for more people.

We prioritize women, girls, and young people because of the disproportionate impact of poor reproductive health on their lives.

Today, more than 200 million women worldwide want access to modern contraceptives but cannot get them. Annually, nearly 350,000 women die because their pregnancies are too soon, too close, or too many, or happen in unsafe conditions. In places where the status of women and girls is low, they are more likely to give birth at very young ages, to have high fertility rates, and to have poor health outcomes as a result.

To make positive reproductive health a reality for more people, our strategies focus on:

  • Mobilizing policies, resources, and political will at the global, regional, and country levels to cultivate a climate that advances and protects family planning and reproductive health and rights
  • Expanding access to quality services by training providers in quality care, introducing new family planning methods, informing communities about reproductive health information (with an emphasis on young people), and expanding access to safe abortion and post-abortion care, and
  • Empowering women and girls to increase their ability to make informed family planning and reproductive health decisions. This includes selective efforts within our geographic focus that improve educational attainment for vulnerable girls, expand leadership and economic opportunities for women, and redefine community priorities to support the ability to make positive reproductive health choices.

The Packard Foundation often works for long periods of time in challenging places where the needs are greatest. We currently focus our work at the Global level, regionally on South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and on selected initiatives within the United States.

With our many partners, we will make family planning information and reproductive health services more widely available, leading to improved lives through delayed marriage, healthy spacing of births, reduction in maternal deaths, and lower rates of poverty. By meeting reproductive health needs, this work also will contribute to higher education rates, greater economic opportunities, population growth rates that match available infrastructure and ecosystem resources, and more prosperous communities.