PRB

The Challenge

In Kenya, counties draw on an equitable share of revenue and conditional grants from the national government as well as their own revenue collections when crafting budgets. Yet, two programs that are critical to supporting a healthy population—HIV/AIDS and maternal and child health—have uncertain futures. These programs receive significant funding from donors. The USAID Stawisha Pwani project supports Kenyan counties in their efforts to raise revenue and allocate resources to develop, improve, and sustain county governments’ investments in HIV/AIDS and maternal and child health.

Funded by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Stawisha Pwani is a five-year project led by LVCT Health. As a key partner on the project, PRB supports four coastal counties by strengthening the financing and accountability of their county health systems.

Our Approach

PRB collaborates with county officials to understand their health budgeting constraints and needs, develop support for evidence-based decision-making, and foster dialogue between them and other key parties in the budgeting process.

For instance, we work closely with representatives from the county health department, treasury, and assembly in Kilifi, Kwale, Mombasa, and Taita Taveta to provide them with technical assistance on allocating resources for HIV/AIDS and maternal and child health services. This assistance includes using data to inform resource distribution and identify weaknesses in the health systems that need their attention. We bring these regional decisionmakers together with national health insurance fund (NIHF) managers at the regional level to advance communication and evidence-based health financing allocations. (The NIHF has been renamed to the social health authority, SHA.)

To enhance accountability and sustainability in health financing, we provide support on budget advocacy, negotiations, and tracking to representatives from the county Department of Health and CSOs. This assistance is targeted at focusing on using health data to inform decision-making in line with the county’s budget calendar.

Input from civil society organizations (CSOs) and youth advisory champions for health also plays a key role in county budgeting processes. We work with CSOs and youth from Kwale, Kilifi, Taita Taveta, and Mombasa, mentoring them on policy advocacy communications. This training provides them with tools, data, and skills to articulate health issues that affect their age groups and communities and help advance solutions in their discussions with policymakers. We also provide support to the media through training that builds their skills so they can focus public attention on critical health systems issues through their reporting.

Outcomes

Monitoring progress. In 2021 PRB conducted political economy and sociocultural baseline assessments that provided summaries of profiles on issues affecting county budgeting and financing for health in Kilifi, Kwale, Mombasa, and Taita Taveta counties. We initiated this baseline report to serve as the foundation for monitoring USAID Stawisha Pwani’s achievements and impact during the project’s lifecycle. The report’s scope focused on health laws and policies in the four counties, assessment of health funding levels, health financing indicators that the project will use to track progress, existing departmental structures like health sector working group and county and subcounty health management teams, challenges in health financing and budgeting, and the impact of COVID-19 on health budgeting. It provided a summary of recommendations on four broad areas—regulations and policies, budget tracking, capacity strengthening, and health care financing—that are guiding the project’s monitoring practices.

Explore the reports.

Capacity building and training. USAID Stawisha Pwani partners with the four county treasury departments to enhance health department staff’s capacity to apply a program-based approach to budgeting. This annual training aligns with the budget process and emphasizes the importance of transparent practices and collaboration between county and sub-county levels.

Project staff also facilitated training for 12 youth in Kwale County, focusing on sexual and reproductive health and budget advocacy. In addition, project staff supported the training of 40 journalists in print and digital media from the four counties. The journalists were trained in policy advocacy and health reporting and developed 22 draft pitch stories.

Two of these stories were published as of early 2024. Watch one of the stories on KTN News Kenya and read a story on Kenya Television Media News KMTN. Listen to a story a feature story on prevention of mother to child HIV transmission in Swahili from Radio Kaya.

We have created the momentum, and the trajectory is set for continuous improvement. In the short period, we have identified the challenges, gaps, and learnt the lessons that will help us improve revenue collection, expenditure, reporting, and eventual improvement in health service delivery.

— Elvis Mwandawiro, Taita Taveta County Director of Health during the launch of the operations and supervision manual

The Challenge

PROPEL Health aims to improve the enabling environment for equitable and sustainable health services, supplies, and delivery systems through policy development and implementation; health financing; government stewardship, transparency, and accountability; and the use of evidence-based advocacy approaches at the global, national, and subnational levels. The project focuses on family planning/reproductive health (FP/RH) and the integration of FP/RH with HIV and maternal and child health (MCH).

To enhance resilience and sustainability, PROPEL Health prioritizes local solutions for policy, advocacy, financing, and governance leadership, technical assistance, and capacity development.

The project’s core team includes Palladium, African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), Avenir Health, Population Reference Bureau (PRB), RTI International, Samasha Medical Foundation, and White Ribbon Alliance (WRA). It is led by Palladium and funded by USAID.

Our Approach

We bring expertise in key areas, including:

• Providing high-quality, up-to-date estimates on key indicators on population, family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH), environment, and gender for countries around the world.
• Supporting advocates to design and use evidence-based, politically smart advocacy approaches to advance their own FP/RH policy priorities.
• Equipping youth to drive change by identifying gaps in implementation of youth-friendly policies and leading advocacy campaigns to overcome them.
• Strengthening local media’s capacity in reproductive health reporting.

PROPEL Health website

The Challenge/Le Défi

Women’s unpaid care work remains largely unrecognized in many countries’ discussions of economic growth and macroeconomic policy. Under this project, PRB works in partnership with Centre Régional de Recherche en Economie Générationnelle (CREG) and University of California at Berkeley (the home of the Counting Women’s Work project) to support estimation of the time women spend on unpaid care work and its contribution to countries’ economies. We are currently supporting national time transfer accounts (NTTA) analysis for five countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo). By measuring women’s unpaid care work, research teams make it easier to explain both the total value of women’s contributions to a country’s economy and the constraints imposed by the amount of time required for women’s unpaid care work. These teams can help identify areas that must be addressed in order to reduce women’s time burden and identify/model potential policy solutions.

Le travail domestique non rémunéré des femmes reste largement non-reconnu dans les discussions de nombreux pays sur la croissance économique et la politique macroéconomique. Dans le cadre de ce projet, PRB travaille en partenariat avec le Centre Régional de Recherche en Economie Générationnelle (CREG) et l’Université de Californie à Berkeley (siège du projet Valorisation du travail des femmes) pour appuyer l’estimation du temps que les femmes consacrent au travail domestique non rémunéré et sa contribution aux économies nationales. Nous soutenons actuellement l’analyse des comptes nationaux de transfert de temps (NTTA) dans cinq pays (Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Sénégal et Togo). En mesurant le travail domestique non rémunéré des femmes, les équipes de recherche permettent d’expliquer plus facilement la valeur totale des contributions des femmes à l’économie d’un pays et les contraintes imposées par le temps requis pour ce travail spécifique. Ces équipes peuvent aider à identifier les barrières à lever afin de réduire les contraintes de temps des femmes et identifier/modéliser des solutions politiques potentielles.

Impact and Outcomes/Impact et résultats

Ultimately, this project will contribute to achieving three goals at the country-level:

1. Increased political will to design services and systems to be more accessible and relevant to women’s needs—particularly as identified by women’s time use in market activities (such as providing goods and services for sale) and non-market activities (such as unpaid care work).
2. Improved social and physical infrastructure that reduce women’s and girls’ “time poverty” or “time burden.”
3. More gender inclusive economic policy developed by considering the effect of or impact on women’s care burden.

To read more about the project, please visit our partner CREG’s blog page (in French) here!

À terme, ce projet contribuera à atteindre trois objectifs au niveau des pays:

1. politique accrue de concevoir des services et des systèmes plus accessibles et adaptés aux besoins des femmes, en particulier tels qu’identifiés par l’utilisation du temps des femmes dans les activités marchandes (fourniture de biens et services rémunérés) et les activités non marchandes (travail domestique non rémunéré).
2. Infrastructures sociales et physiques améliorées qui réduisent la « pauvreté de temps » ou la « charge de temps » des femmes et des filles.
3. Politique économique plus inclusive en matière de genre élaborée en tenant compte de l’effet ou de l’impact sur la charge des soins donnés par les femmes.

Pour en savoir plus sur le projet, consultez la page du blog de notre partenaire CREG (en français) ici!

The Challenge

Advocates and community members need evidence-based resources to support their efforts to advance children’s well-being in California.

The KidsData project makes data on the health and well-being of California’s children accessible to policymakers, service providers, grant seekers, media, parents, and others who influence children’s lives. The project provides context that distills key research and works with the user community to empower advocates and community members by providing them with resources they can use.

Our Approach

We collect current and historical data for nearly 60 topics of child well-being from more than 35 sources. Topic strengths include adverse childhood experiences; child poverty; and physical, emotional, and behavioral health. We also extensively cover child safety, childcare, education, demographic projections, homelessness, safety net programs, and more. We draw on data sources that include the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, California state agencies’ data files, and health surveys such as the National Survey of Children’s Health, California Healthy Kids Survey, and California Health Interview Survey. Data are provided for California’s counties, cities, school districts, and state legislative districts.

We have also developed innovative estimation methods to improve access to data on child health topics for some demographic subgroups and in small geographic regions. The KidsData program raises awareness about important data findings and demographic and geographic disparities in child health and well-being through newsletters, social media, and presentations. Through a network of collaborations with other organizations, we provide substantive and technical expertise to support beneficial outcomes in shared interest areas of children’s well-being. Data are available at www.KidsData.org.

KidsData.org is a source that I use on a regular basis for factual, non-partisan data.

– Debbie Look, California Assembly member

Impacts & Outcomes

PRB, the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health (LPFCH), and The Children’s Partnership partnered on an analysis of the implications for child health of changes to the Public Charge Rule. Through this analysis we found that nearly 180,000 noncitizen children in California would be at direct risk of losing their health insurance coverage—mostly Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)—under the revised rule. An additional 1.6 million citizen children of noncitizen parents in California could also be at risk. Learn more.

PRB analyzed trends in public health insurance (such as Medicaid and CHIP) among children in California. Through this analysis, we discovered that in 2015 and 2016, seven in 10 children in California participated in Medicaid or CHIP, either temporarily or year-round. Using these data, LPFCH wrote an advisory that sparked discussion of children’s health insurance among state legislators. Learn more.

The Opportunity

While research often has profound practical implications, it must be communicated effectively to a variety of non-technical audiences to influence policy and programmatic change.

Current U.S. predoctoral graduate education is not designed to train researchers in how to communicate research results to nonacademic audiences. PRB addresses this gap with its U.S. Policy Communications Training Program.

The program prepares current Ph.D. students from U.S. academic institutions to influence policy and practice through effective communication. Participants learn to present findings on population and health topics in ways that are understandable and accessible to policy audiences, including decisionmakers, advocates, and the media. They will understand how research informs the policy environment, learn ways to communicate findings to U.S. and international policy audiences, and improve their ability to communicate in written and verbal formats.

The program’s main goal is to expand the cadre of U.S. population research professionals committed to policy communication. Its objectives are to: (1) address barriers that researchers face in communicating population-related research results to policy audiences; (2) engage a diverse group of predoctoral students (future population professionals) in policy communication over their careers; and (3) teach population scientists about the process by which research informs the policy environment, how to identify and communicate the policy implications of their research, and various tools/skills for communicating findings to U.S. policy audiences.

Our Approach

The U.S. Policy Communications Training Program consists of two components.

1. Workshop: A week-long summer workshop in Washington, D.C., focuses on the role of research in the U.S. policymaking process and on techniques for effective communication of research findings to U.S. decisionmakers, media, and non-technical audiences. Participants hear firsthand from congressional researchers, lobbyists, and others about their experiences using research to effect change. They also practice distilling policy-relevant messages from their research and communicating this information in nontechnical language.
2. Practicum: During the academic year following the workshop, participants receive mentorship and apply lessons learned to create two policy communication products, such as a policy brief, blog post, web article, or op-ed, based on their dissertations or related research topics.

The Impact

PRB has trained nearly 100 Ph.D. students enrolled in reputable U.S. academic institutions and conducting research on population and health topics to communicate with U.S. policy audiences, including government decisionmakers, advocates, and the media, since 2015.

Make an Application

The 2023 training program awards were announced in April 2023. The announcement for future training programs will be made on the PRB website.

Applicants submitted the following to PRB:

• A completed application form.
• An up-to-date resume with a full list of educational and other professional activities.
• Two letters of reference sent directly from the person writing the reference.

The Challenge

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as cancers, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and chronic respiratory diseases have become the world’s leading causes of death, accounting for 70% of all deaths globally in 2015. Compared to high-income countries, NCDs in lower-income countries generally claim lives at younger ages, often at the peak of individuals’ economic productivity. NCDs pose a significant threat to the health and well-being of populations, economic growth, and sustainable development, especially in low- and middle-income countries, underscoring the importance of prioritizing their prevention.

Our Approach

The four main NCDs share four risk factors: tobacco use, harmful use of alcohol, physical inactivity, and unhealthy diet. These risk factors are all modifiable behaviors typically initiated or established during adolescence or young adulthood, setting the stage for NCDs later in life. Preventing or reducing risk behaviors among youth today can minimize the future burden of the growing NCD epidemic. Under this project, PRB created products that underscore the opportunity that low- and middle-income countries have to curb rising NCD epidemics. PRB also conducted policy communication training for youth advocates working on this health issue, and journalist training to improve the quantity and quality of reporting on the matter.

The Challenge

Thousands of women in sub-Saharan Africa die each year from pregnancy-related causes. Unsafe abortions account for one in seven maternal deaths in Africa, and more than 1.5 million women are treated each year for complications from unsafe abortion. Young African women are especially affected: More than half of unsafe abortions in the region are among women under age 25. Reducing deaths from unsafe abortion requires a policy environment that supports women to equitably access comprehensive prevention and treatment services—contraception, safe abortion, and postabortion care.

Our Approach

The four-year SAFE ENGAGE project is implemented in countries across sub-Saharan Africa, including Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lagos state in Nigeria, and Zimbabwe. SAFE ENGAGE also contains a rapid response mechanism through which other national and regional partners can request creative, data-driven communications materials to support specific advocacy objectives.

SAFE ENGAGE

• Advances policy dialogue for safe abortion by creating compelling evidence-based multimedia presentations and other materials for policymakers, advocates, and journalists.
• Builds country-level individual and institutional capacity to use evidence for policy advocacy to promote safe abortion and reduce unsafe abortion.
• Works with journalists to increase the quality and quantity of evidence-based news coverage on safe abortion through in-country media training and journalists’ engagement.

Impact

SAFE ENGAGE established four country-level task forces that brought together demographers, economists, medical professionals, women’s health and rights proponents, policymakers from government ministries, and parliamentarians for discussions about abortion. These task forces created spaces for collaboration and information sharing that broadened dialogue to include new perspectives, created consensus around objectives and messages, and renewed a focus on evidence. Each task force produced and disseminated ENGAGE multimedia presentation packages. This process strengthened the capacity of task force members to use data and messaging effectively in their own presentations and materials, strengthened collaboration and consensus among safe abortion champions, and generated important policy conversations that are continuing today.

SAFE ENGAGE also supported an intensive media training effort to equip a cadre of journalists in each country to accurately report on the policies and laws surrounding abortion and the determinants, incidence, and consequences of unsafe abortion. Each country setting required its own context-specific focus, and this tailored approach has reaped the reward of high-quality reporting across diverse news outlets.

During the second phase of the project, SAFE ENGAGE built on the work of the task forces by conducting policy communication training and regional learning exchanges to strengthen Task Force members’ ability to communicate with policy audiences and foster collaboration across neighboring countries. The regional learning exchanges also allowed participants to learn from each other’s successes and brainstorm approaches to overcoming shared challenges. SAFE ENGAGE also produced a guide to policy dialogue for safe abortion, which synthesized learning from the first phase of the project.

The Challenge

Advocates and community members need evidence-based resources to support their efforts to advance children’s well-being in California.

The Kidsdata project makes data on the health and well-being of California’s children accessible to policymakers, service providers, grant seekers, media, parents, and others who influence children’s lives. The project provides context that distills key research and works with the user community to empower advocates and community members by providing them with resources they can use.

Our Approach

We collect current and historical data for more than 300 indicators of child well-being, from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, California state agencies, health surveys (such as the California Health Interview Survey and National Survey of Children’s Health), and other sources. PRB has also developed innovative estimation methods to improve data coverage on child health topics. Data are provided for California’s counties, school districts, state legislative districts, and cities. In addition to data and analytical support, PRB partners with the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health (LPFCH) on webinars, blog posts, technical assistance to journalists, and analytical support for oversampling work to improve the quality of data about child health in California.

View Data at Kidsdata.org

Impact

PRB, LPFCH, and The Children’s Partnership partnered on an analysis of the implications for child health of changes to the Public Charge Rule. Through this analysis we found that nearly 180,000 noncitizen children in California would be at direct risk of losing their health insurance coverage—mostly Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)—under the revised rule. An additional 1.6 million citizen children of noncitizen parents in California could also be at risk. Learn more.

LPFCH worked with PRB to analyze trends in public health insurance (such as Medicaid and CHIP) among children in California. Through this analysis, we discovered that in 2015 and 2016, seven in 10 children in California participated in Medicaid or CHIP, either temporarily or year-round. LPFCH wrote an advisory about the data, which sparked discussion of children’s health insurance among state legislators. Learn more.

The Challenge

Young people’s ability to freely determine their reproductive lives greatly affects their livelihoods and that of their future families. EEDA offered young people the opportunity to lead family planning policy change efforts through policy research, evidence-based communication, and targeted advocacy strategies.

EEDA’s goals were to improve the implementation of existing family planning policies, especially those that support youth access to and use of contraception; and generate new funding and policy commitments for family planning in response to evidence-driven advocacy. It aimed to achieve these goals by increasing youth advocates’ capacity to measure policy implementation and hold governments accountable for their commitments, and by increasing decisionmakers’ use of evidence.

Outcomes

EEDA pioneered partner-driven and youth-led approaches, backed with solid evidence, that generated 57 new family planning (FP) funding or policy commitments and contributed to 21 unique instances of improved implementation of FP policies.

The project supported the development of more than 111 data-driven, customized advocacy materials that are being used by youth advocates and partner organizations to advance advocacy objectives in 13 countries across Africa and Asia. Through a unique research-to-action curriculum and sustained collaboration, EEDA imparted policy advocacy, communications, or data collection skills to more than 170 youth advocates and representatives from partner organizations.

Family Planning Advocacy Resource Hub

The Family Planning Advocacy Resource Hub, a component of the EEDA project, equipped advocacy organizations with communications materials that fluently integrate data and evidence in formats that are compelling to decisionmakers. When paired with effective advocacy strategies, our evidence-based communication messages and tools helped catalyze the progress of family planning advocacy organizations toward their objectives and goals.

The Evidence Project uses implementation science—the strategic generation, translation, and use of evidence—to improve family planning policies, programs, and practices. Led by the Population Council, the five-year project (2013–2018) is investigating which strategies work best in improving, expanding, and sustaining family planning services. It is also evaluating how to implement and scale up those strategies. Critical to the Evidence Project is translating this knowledge and working with stakeholders to apply the evidence and to build capacity in using implementation science to improve policies, programs, and practices.

Through implementation science, the Evidence Project pinpoints how family planning and reproductive health services can operate more effectively, equitably, and at scale. The project is focused on several implementation science technical priorities and activities organized around key supply and demand factors that affect access to and use of family planning and reproductive health services. It also focuses on three cross-cutting principles: rights and accountability, gender equality, and implementation science for scale up. Through this work, the Evidence Project is helping to reduce unmet need and unintended pregnancies around the world.

Project Activities

The Evidence Project is leading the discussion on:

• Social accountability for sexual and reproductive health and rights.
• Adolescent-friendly reproductive health services.
• Generating evidence and impact through implementation science.
• Reproductive health services in the workplace.

Explore Project Publications

Access the latest Evidence Project publications on the Population Council website.

• Research reports.
• Journal articles.
• Briefs.
• Infographics.