Rachel Yavinsky
Senior Policy Advisor
PRB supports implementation science partners with knowledge translation and strategic communication to transform social norms for adolescent and youth reproductive health.
USAID, Institute for Reproductive Health-Georgetown University
Senior Policy Advisor
Program Director
Young people’s ability to forge healthy relationships is influenced by social norms—the informal rules that govern behavior in groups and societies—that are enforced by peers, families, and communities. Social norms shape behaviors related to sexual debut, intimate partner and sexual violence, and early marriage, as well as access to education and the services and information young people need to protect their health. Research has shown that investing in efforts to create normative change at the community (rather than individual) level, while ensuring supportive policies and access to good quality services, can bring about significant improvements in sexual and reproductive health.
PRB partners with the Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH), Georgetown University to support knowledge translation and strategic communication for the Passages Project, a USAID-funded implementation research project. Passages aims to address a broad range of social norms to achieve sustained improvements in family planning, reproductive health, and gender-based violence. PRB’s partnership expands Passages’ global leadership and dissemination efforts that focus on information synthesis, knowledge sharing, and capacity building.
In the first phase of the project, PRB developed a strategic communications plan to ensure the project’s legacy is well communicated to key stakeholders. Working with IRH and existing Passages consortium partners, PRB is developing a range of legacy products that are evidence-based, practical, and accessible to a targeted range of stakeholders:
Explore Passages Project resources
MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator supports improvements in voluntary family planning and reproductive health including integration with maternal and child health programs.
USAID
Over the past three decades, the health status of women, newborns, and children has improved significantly. These gains, however, have not been equal across or within countries, and challenges remain. Globally, 295,000 mothers and 5.3 million children under age 5 still die each year, primarily in low- and middle-income countries and from preventable causes.
MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator will catalyze improvements in maternal, newborn, and child health programs by ensuring the right information reaches the right people in the right formats to inform decisions that save lives and reduce illness and disability. As part of USAID’s MOMENTUM program, MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator will support improvements in voluntary family planning and reproductive health activities, including their integration with maternal and child health programs, providing health and cost benefits to USAID priority countries.
Using a more targeted, context-specific approach, MOMENTUM will increase the ability of partner country institutions and local organizations to create demand for, deliver, scale up, and sustain quality evidence-based interventions.
MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator will help accelerate future improvements by ensuring information generated by the MOMENTUM suite of awards reaches the right people at the right times in the right formats to inform good decisions.
Barbara Seligman, Project director and PRB vice president for International Programs
MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator is part of a suite of awards that builds the capacity of national and local partners in low- and middle-income countries to identify and scale up maternal, neonatal, and child health interventions with the greatest impact on saving lives.
“In the past two decades, the world has seen tremendous improvement in the health of women and children. MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator will help accelerate future improvements by ensuring information generated by the MOMENTUM suite of awards reaches the right people at the right times in the right formats to inform good decisions,” said Barbara Seligman, project director and PRB vice president for International Programs. “The MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator team combines expertise in translating data to propel action, with excellence in strengthening developing-country health monitoring and evaluation systems and leadership in health innovation and adaptive learning.”
Among the MOMENTUM awards, MOMENTUM Knowledge Accelerator will play a unique role, coordinating the systematic collection, analysis, synthesis, translation, and sharing of data and learning across the entire suite. This role includes collaborating with all MOMENTUM awards to tell the collective story of MOMENTUM’s impact on maternal and child health, voluntary family planning, and reproductive health at the global and country levels.
PRB leads a dynamic team that includes JSI Research and Training Institute, Inc., and Ariadne Labs, the innovation center at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, as core partners. Together, the team will support the MOMENTUM suite in building on existing evidence and best practices, introducing new ideas and approaches, and facilitating adaptive learning and management of interventions to improve the health of women and children.
PACE and our local partners build champions, bridge sectors, and distill evidence to ensure that family planning, reproductive health, and population issues are recognized as key to sustainable and equitable economic growth and development.
USAID
Associate Vice President
Program Director
Africa Director, Regional Representative for West and Central Africa
Former Country Director, Kenya
Program Finance & Operations Manager
Adaptive Learning and Knowledge Management | Data Visualization and Dissemination | Demographic Estimation and Forecasting
| Distilling Research for Non-Technical Audiences | Research and Data Analysis | Policy and Advocacy Communications Training | Technical Assistance and Training | Training and Support for Journalists
Over the last two decades, many countries have realized remarkable increases in the use of modern contraception. More women and couples are using effective methods to choose when and how many children to have—benefiting their health, their children’s health, and their families’ economic prospects. However, this progress varies regionally and within countries, and demand for voluntary family planning is not fully satisfied in many USAID priority countries. To meet this need, development partners and national advocates are mobilizing to ensure that governments honor the policy, financial, and other commitments made through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Family Planning 2020 partnership, and other initiatives.
Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the PACE Project—Policy, Advocacy, and Communication Enhanced for Reproductive Health—ensures these commitments are met at the global, national, and decentralized levels by strengthening capacities in advocacy, policy communication, and negotiation; building bridges between sectors with integrated approaches such as population, health, and environment and efforts to amplify understanding of the benefits of age-structure change across development sectors; and analyzing, distilling, and disseminating evidence and data to engage policy and advocacy audiences to act. PACE integrates the cross-cutting themes of gender, youth, and equity throughout all activities.
PACE activities ensure that family planning, reproductive health, and population issues are at the heart of policies and programs and are recognized as key to sustainable and equitable economic growth and development. Through PACE, PRB can help countries achieve Family Planning 2020 commitments, end preventable child and maternal deaths, and reach the SDGs.
Since the project’s launch in 2015, PACE has advanced political and financial commitments for family planning and reproductive health across 20 countries. In 2020, the project was extended so we can continue to:
PACE’s intensive capacity strengthening positions partners and individuals, including new cadres of champions, to implement and advocate for multisectoral development solutions that make tangible contributions to countries’ Journey to Self-Reliance (J2SR). Our approach adapts to our partners and is premised on sustainable engagement driven by their needs. We are an active part of the communities we serve, listening and working together.
Across several multisectoral approaches to development—including population, environment, and development (PED); gender; and the demographic dividend—PACE plays a critical role by providing technical expertise; identifying, training, and convening champions; and developing and disseminating cutting-edge knowledge.
PACE generates innovative approaches to analyze, synthesize, and communicate data and information to decisionmakers. PACE co-creates tools and products and applies fresh dissemination approaches in collaboration with local partners, and leads efforts to increase the use and application of data for policymaking.
PRB’s East Africa office, based in Nairobi, oversees PACE’s largest country program in Kenya, a multipronged effort supporting partners across sectors and geographies to create an enabling environment for prioritizing family planning and reproductive health and contribute to implementation of the J2SR.
For family planning advocates, no greater success exists than a dedicated and adequately funded line item in the health budget. PACE’s strategic approach to budget advocacy has paid off in Samburu County, Kenya, where concerted advocacy activities led to a first-ever budget line item for family planning, as well as an increased percentage of the county’s budget allocated to health in FY 2020/21. Over a period of months, PACE facilitated workshops to support the county health management team (CHMT), sector working groups, and departmental representatives to identify priorities for county budgeting. This continuous engagement with the CHMT has enabled them to effectively advocate to the Finance Department and County Assembly for increased funding for health and a new budget line valued at approximately $112,000 for family planning.
Nigerian youth advocates trained by PACE secured policy commitments from local leaders by creating videos focused on ending child marriage and increasing access to family planning services. BCAI, a youth-led organization launched with support from PACE, aided local youth advocates to widely disseminate the videos across popular social media platforms and in community-level policy dialogues with seven influential leaders from both the traditional and political governing structures in northern Nigeria. Following their outreach, the governor of Kano State made a public declaration to end child marriage by committing his support to the Child Protection Bill. While the legislation is still pending, sections of the bill that provide for compulsory schooling for all children as a method to reduce child marriage have been adopted into a state-level policy.
Under PACE, PRB works closely with global actors, national and local governments, USAID missions, and civil society to build champions, bridge sectors, and distill evidence through data-driven, innovative products. PACE strengthens capacities in advocacy, policy communication, and negotiation, and increases commitments to multisectoral approaches such as Population, Health, and Environment and the demographic dividend.
PACE produces original analysis and targeted communication materials to examine variations in adolescent fertility throughout Nepal. Together with local partners, PACE works to ensure that Nepal’s policies and programs use this new information on adolescent fertility to strengthen family planning programs and keep girls in school as the country promotes sustainable, equitable economic growth and development.
In Kenya, PACE works with national and subnational partners to ensure that sustained access to quality family planning and reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health is enshrined in Kenya’s policies and programs to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and Kenya’s Vision 2030. PACE is recognized as a key partner supporting Kenya’s Journey to Self-Reliance.
The Sahel Faith ENGAGE initiative supports policy dialogue about faith and family planning in three countries—Guinea, Mali, and Mauritania—working with a task force of religious leaders, youth, and government representatives contributing to an enabling environment for policies and programs supportive of reproductive health in the Sahel.
In Senegal, PACE supports religious leaders who are working to increase knowledge among their communities about the benefits of family planning, and continues to build the capacity of the media on the multiple benefits of family planning and maternal and child health services.
In Zambia, PACE implements innovative, strategic approaches to ensure that HIV/AIDS, population, and family planning are included in Zambia’s policies and programs as key to sustainable and equitable economic growth and development.
The 2021 World Population Data Sheet offers the latest population, health, and environment indicators for more than 200 countries and territories, each carefully researched by PRB’s expert team of demographers and analysts.
This toolkit bridges the gap that often lies between research and policy. It consolidates tools, materials, and approaches PRB has developed and refined over 30 years of training researchers to communicate with policy audiences.
Women’s decisions about family planning are complex and change over time. Understanding these shifts can help us meet women’s needs and support their goals.
In Ghana and Uganda, young people dominate the population age structure below age 15. Both countries can shift this high child dependency by empowering women to achieve their reproductive goals.
Supporting targeted local planning in the context of Nepal’s recently devolved governance, the PACE Project has released modeled estimates of adolescent fertility for the 753 municipalities in Nepal.
Yet even as governments refine their development plans and priorities, they are contending with the massive disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic.