Showing posts from category global health.
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PATH Foundation’s ‘Population, Health, and Environment Leadership as a Way of Life’
›PATH Foundation Philippines, Inc. (PFPI) just released a short documentary, Population-Health-Environment (PHE) Leadership as a Way of Life in All Walks of Life. The video features interviews with peer educators and local government officials who have partnered with PFPI on integrated coastal resource management in the Philippines that combines family planning and reproductive health services with environmental services.
According to those interviewed, an integrated approach is the best way to alleviate food insecurity in the area. “We cannot separate population, health, and environment, they should be implemented hand in hand,” said Marlyn Alcanises, a Fisheries and Coastal Resource Management program officer. “Even if we manage our coastal resources well, if there are many children due to high fertility and population growth, many people are hungry.”
The comprehensive program has been successful in addressing the social and environmental problems in the Verde Island Passage of the Philippines, one of Asia’s most densely populated regions, as well as a marine biodiversity hotspot and sea lane for many commercial ships.
The program uses community-based distribution of contraceptives to increase access to family planning, micro-credit schemes to finance sustainable livelihoods and alleviate poverty, and advocacy campaigns to increase government support for integrated health and environment programs.
Municipal Planning and Development Coordinator Cecilia Zulueta praised the integrated approach, saying “it can slow down population growth, decrease the number of malnutrition cases, lessen the number of out-of-school youth, and it can also decrease the crime rate, because if one does not have a stable source of income it may force him to engage in illegal activities.”
In ECSP’s FOCUS Issue 15, “Fishing for Families: Reproductive Health and Integrated Coastal Management in the Philippines,” Joan Castro and Leona D’Agnes demonstrated that PFPI’s Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management project (IPOPCORM) was more cost-effective and had a greater impact on the wellbeing of both human reproductive health and coastal resources than non-integrated programs. In a study measuring the impacts of integrated versus single-sector reproductive health (RH) or coastal resource management (CRM) programs, they found the integrated approach met or exceeded single-sector outcomes for 26 out of 27 indicators.
Reducing high fertility rates reduces pressure on natural resources, decreases high rates of malnutrition, crime and HIV/AIDS, and preserves local fisheries, “making life sustainable for both humans and nature,” as PFPI puts it in the documentary. The hope is that the community leaders featured in the documentary will inspire others in similar situations to take the lead on integrated issues in their communities.
“Even if we are doing environmental conservation through population management in our province but the others are not, it will still create conflict somehow,” said Alcanises. “I believe that whatever program is being done in one province should also be done in other provinces, in order to avoid conflict and promote balance in program implementation.”
Julio Lopez, president of the Galera Association of Managers and Entertainers said, “this land is ours, and we are responsible in taking care of it.”
PFPI, along with the University of Rhode Island’s Coastal Resource Center and Conservation International, is part of the BALANCED project, which last year launched the PHE Toolkit as a resource for PHE professionals. For more on PFPI’s IPOPCORM program, see ECSP’s interviews with Joan Casto and Leona D’Agnes on our YouTube channel: “Joan Castro – Integrated Population and Coastal Resource Management (IPOPCORM)” and “Leona D’Agnes on Population, Health, and Environment.”
Video Credit: “Population-Health-Environment (PHE) A Video Documentary,” courtesy of YouTube user PATHFoundationPhils.
Sources: Population Reference Bureau. -
Watch: David Aylward on How Wireless Technology is Changing Global Health and Empowering Women
›“We have millions of young children, babies, dying unnecessarily, hundreds of thousands of women dying in childbirth – most of them unnecessarily – in large part for lack of access to health, lack of access to health information,” said David Aylward, executive director of the UN Foundation’s mHealth Alliance. “And while wireless doesn’t solve any of those problems by itself, it is a conduit, a pathway to solve those problems.”
We spoke to Aylward before the Global Health Initiative (GHI) event “New Applications for Existing Technologies to Improve Maternal Health,” at the Wilson Center earlier this week.
“We’ve gone from a billion subscribers to five billion subscribers in the last six years, and 70 percent of those are in the developing world,” he said. “So almost everywhere you go a woman has a cellphone or has access to a cellphone.”
This access allows women in the developing world to do basic things those in the developed world take for granted, like call for help or set up reminders. The most important thing to think about in the future is to continue empowering women with the tools and knowledge to understand their own healthcare and supporting them with better care.
“All of which are possible in the very near term if we can get the different parties to get together and work on them together,” said Aylward, “and that’s what our mission is.”
Check out the the full event summary from GHI here. -
UNFPA State of World Population 2010
›Today marks the release of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) annual State of the World Population Report. But the 2010 edition, “From Conflict and Crisis to Renewal: Generations of Change,” is unlike those that have come before. In lieu of the traditional statistic-driven report, this year’s edition has enlisted another tool to document living conditions across the world — storytelling. In addition to demographers, the UNFPA looked to journalists to fan out across the world to gather stories on the ground and paint a portrait of the challenges and opportunities facing today’s global population that goes beyond the numbers, with particular focus on gender issues and human insecurity.
For more on the UNFPA report, be sure to listen to The New Security Beat’s interview with one of its authors, Barbara Crossette, who talks about her experiences dealing with family planning around the world, as part of our ongoing Pop Audio series.
Video Credit: UNFPA. -
Barbara Crossette on UNFPA State of the World Population 2010 Report
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“Particularly when you go into a society that’s been broken by war or conflict or is so impoverished that is has nowhere to start climbing up, there have to be integrated programs and they have to work with people in mind,” said former New York Times foreign correspondent Barbara Crossette in an interview with The New Security Beat. “The people themselves will solve a lot of the problems around them if they’re just given the tools to do so.”
Crossette is one of the lead authors of the UN Population Fund’s latest State of the World Population Report, “From Conflict and Crisis to Renewal: Generations of Change,” set to launch this Wednesday, October 20th. She spoke to us particularly about the challenges of women around the world and the unique storytelling aspect of this year’s report.
The “Pop Audio” series offers brief clips from ECSP’s conversations with experts around the world, sharing analysis and promoting dialogue on population-related issues. Also available on iTunes. -
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, Council on Foreign Relations
MDGs for Women Largely Unmet
›October 15, 2010 // By Wilson Center Staff
Excerpt from a First Take by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon at the Council on Foreign Relations:
Ten years after global leaders vowed to work toward eradicating extreme poverty, achieving universal primary education, reducing child mortality, and more, the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – particularly those relating to women – remain a distant hope. Though women were a focus of much discussion this week at the MDG summit in New York, the forward movement so far has been discouraging on the two MDGs directly relating to women: “promoting gender equality and empowering women” and “reducing by three-quarters the maternal mortality ratio.”
An MDG report released in June noted that when it comes to women, “progress has been sluggish on all fronts – from education to access to political decision-making.”While progress has been made on girls’ primary school enrollment, only three of ten regions are on track regarding women’s share of paid employment. The figure is even bleaker concerning women’s equal representation in national parliaments.
Data is still being collected, but early figures show the maternal mortality ratio reduction rate is “well short” of the 5.5 percent annual decline required to slash global maternal mortality by the MDGs’ stated 75 percent. Data from 1990 shows 430 maternal deaths per one hundred thousand live births. As of 2008, that figure had dropped only slightly to four hundred deaths per one hundred thousand live births, nowhere near the goal of below 150.
Continue reading at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Photo Credit: Adapted from “Untitled,” courtesy of flickr user :Bron:. -
Welcome Back, Roger-Mark: A Powerful Voice Returns to PHE
›October 13, 2010 // By Geoffrey D. Dabelko“I’m thrilled to be back.” That was the sentiment that Roger-Mark De Souza relayed to me, in his famous lilting baritone, about becoming the new vice president of research and director of the climate program at Population Action International (PAI). De Souza has long been a leading voice on integrated development programs that feature population, health, and environmental (PHE) dimensions. But three years as the Sierra Club’s director of foundations and corporate relations took him away from day-to-day work on these issues.
In his new posts, Roger-Mark will lead PAI’s research team in establishing a strong evidence base and engaging new allies in the effort to support healthier women and families, according to PAI. “Roger-Mark’s diverse research experience makes him an ideal fit for PAI as we undertake critical projects on reproductive health, population and environment issues,” said PAI President and CEO Suzanne Ehlers in a press release.PAI is a research-based advocacy NGO long known for innovative work connecting demographic considerations with other key development realms: mainly environment, security, and poverty. PAI’s policy-friendly briefs on population’s links with water, forests, and biodiversity provide practical meta-analysis of these complex and evolving connections. The organization’s more recent work on demographic security has been instrumental in advancing research and policy in that largely neglected arena.
De Souza captured his insights last year for our Focus series, in his brief, “The Integration Imperative – How to Improve Development Programs by Linking Population, Health, and Environment” (see also his follow-up interview on NSB). He combines lessons learned from community-based development efforts in Southeast Asia and East Africa with a savvy sense of the policy debates among donors and recipient countries alike.
This move reunites De Souza with Kathleen Mogelgaard, with whom he made key contributions to the PHE field as colleagues at Population Reference Bureau earlier this decade, and who is now Senior Advisor for Population, Gender, and Climate at PAI.
De Souza returns to his former focus on PHE issues at a time when the field is collectively searching for the best ways to respond to the challenges of climate mitigation and adaptation, as well as ongoing hurdles such as scaling up, sustainability, and labeling. -
The “Condom King” speaks at TEDxChange on Poverty Reduction and a “9th MDG”
›“We have now found the weapon of mass protection,” said Mechai Viravaidya (a.k.a. the “Condom King”) at the recent TEDxChange event in New York. Viravaidya is the founder and chairman of the Population and Community Development Association and a former senator of Thailand. He spoke about his innovative approaches to addressing Thailand’s once high rates of poverty, child mortality, and HIV through the promotion of family planning and condom use.
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Women, Water and Conflict as Development Priorities Plus Some Geoengineering Context
›September 24, 2010 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoHere are some useful links to environment, population, and security work that recently crossed my desk.
• NYU’s Richard Gowan dissects UK development minister Andrew Mitchell’s encouraging speech identifying conflict-affected states as special DFID priorities. Gowan pulls out highlights from the speech and parses NGO reaction to it on Global Dashboard.
• Council on Foreign Relations’ Isobel Coleman provides five practical suggestions for tapping into women as the “new global growth engine,” on Forbes.
• The Aspen Institute announced its Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health this week. Their goal: meeting unmet demand for family planning services by 2015 on the MDG schedule. That is over 200,000,000 women who want services but do not have access.
• I’m heartened to see the U.S. Senate pass the Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act. Hoping the House will follow suit. Last time Congress passed legislation on water, sanitation, and health priorities, the 2005 Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support.
• Colby historian Jim Fleming, writing in Slate, puts the increasing fascination with geoengineering as a climate response “option” in some sobering historical context. “Weather as a Weapon: The Troubling History of Geoengineering” is the short read. Tune in to hear Jim present the book length version, Fixing the Sky, at the Wilson Center, October 6th at 10:30 am EST.
Follow Geoff Dabelko (@geoffdabelko) and The New Security Beat (@NewSecurityBeat) on Twitter for more population, health, environment, and security updates.
