Although the World Health Organization recommends women wait at least two years after a live birth before becoming pregnant again, an estimated 25 percent of birth intervals in low-income countries do not meet this recommendation. As a result, the need for postpartum family planning services (PPFP) that enable women to adequately space births is high, […]
Worldwide, both mortality and fertility rates are on the decline, with the shift occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa a few decades ago. Fertility decline occurs in the latter stages of ‘demographic transitions,’ during which countries experience declining mortality and fertility rates as they develop economically. Demographic transitions have come to be associated with socioeconomic progress, and […]
Treatment-as-prevention (TasP) refers to the strategy of treating HIV-positive individuals with antiretroviral therapy (ART) to prevent sexual transmission of the disease to others. A landmark 2011 study by the HIV Prevention Trials Network that monitored transmission amongst mixed HIV status couples (in which one partner was HIV-positive and one HIV-negative) provided conclusive evidence that ART […]
By Emanne Khan Antiretroviral therapy (ART) not only extends the lives of people with HIV. It also prevents sexual transmission of the virus. However, knowledge of ART’s impact on transmission has been slow to gain mainstream understanding and traction. In 2011, the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN)-052 study received results from a trial of 1,763 […]
By Mahesh Karra Unlike many domains in health, the provision of high-quality family planning services is not only measured by the achievement of good reproductive health outcomes, but also considers the objective of helping women and couples maximize a complex and evolving set of preferences around future fertility and well-being. For this reason, the demand […]
Quotas for women in government have swept the globe. Yet, little is known about their capacity to upend entrenched social, political and economic hierarchies. The new book, Women, Power and Property: The Paradox of Gender Equality Laws in India, by Human Capital Initiative Core Faculty Member Rachel Brulé explores this question within the context of […]
By Emanne Khan It is a well-established fact that women are underrepresented in global politics, and recent data from the United Nations demonstrates this underrepresentation spans all levels of government. Worldwide, women serve as heads of state or government in only 22 countries, and make up a mere 21 percent of government ministers; 25 percent […]
By Emanne Khan South Africa is home to the world’s largest population of individuals living with HIV, numbering nearly 8 million, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. South Africa also administers the world’s largest public HIV treatment program, which serves a patient population between 4-5 million people. Despite the scope of the […]
Around the world, women are significantly underrepresented in politics, from participation to elected positions. A gender gap is also evident in policy preferences, with women and men expressing systematically different priorities about how states should raise and invest resources. Women are more likely than men to favor redistribution, social security, and insurance, for example, and […]
Despite widespread availability of HIV treatment, patient outcomes differ across facilities. In a new study by PLOS Medicine, Jacob Bor and coauthors proposed and evaluated an approach to measure quality of HIV care at health facilities in South Africa’s national HIV program using routine laboratory data. They analyzed data from 3,265 facilities with a median annual […]