The Population Association of America (PAA) is a nonprofit, scientific, professional organization established to promote the improvement, advancement and progress of the human race through research of problems related to human population.

PAA members include demographers, sociologists, economists, public health professionals, and other individuals interested in research and education in the population field.

PAA membership has grown to 3,000 reflecting professional interest in the population field. Members receive Demography, the bi-monthly journal of the Association, and PAA Affairs, the quarterly on-line newsletter.

The Population Association of America Conference 2017 will be held in Chicago, IL from April 27 – 29th.

The University of California Global Health Institute’s Center of Expertise on Women’s Health, Gender and Empowerment is accepting proposals for UP TO $1,500 to support University of California undergraduate students pursuing unpaid internships/fellowships during the summer of 2017.

Women’s Health Gender & Empowerment COE

The Center of Expertise (COE) on Women’s Health, Gender and Empowerment is Center of the University of California Global Health Institute (http://ucghi.universityofcalifornia.edu/coes/womens-health/index.aspx). Advances in women’s health are globally impeded by poverty, limited access to educational and economic opportunities, gender bias and discrimination, unjust laws, and insufficient state accountability. These forces intersect to restrict women’s access to vital health services and the information they need to improve their lives. By prioritizing women’s health concerns, rights, and empowerment, this COE is uniquely poised to catalyze societal-level changes that will yield sustainable improvements in health and well-being for women on a global scale.

Mission:  We envision a world in which all women and girls are empowered and healthy. Our mission is to promote justice, equity and scientific advances to reduce gender and health disparities globally. Grounded in human rights principles, our approach is interdisciplinary and transformative.  Through innovative research, education and international collaboration, we build and strengthen the capacity of the next generation of leaders in women’s health and empowerment.  Our core activities focus on assuring safe motherhood, reducing violence against women, improving access to family planning and reproductive technologies, advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights, preventing HIV/AIDS, and reducing environmental threats to women’s health.

Summer Internship/Fellowship:  Our goal is to provide money to support undergraduate students to be involved in innovative research, programs and policy development activities in the areas of women’s health gender and empowerment, and who specifically investigate the intersection and interrelated nature of these three areas. Our aim is to allocate funds efficiently to the most meritorious proposals. We expect to fund nine proposals for summer research projects.

Timeline: The deadline for this call for small grant proposals is April 15, 2017 at 5 PM PST, but we will accept applications prior to this date.  Proposals may request up to $1,500, to be spent by September 15, 2017, after which remaining funds revert to the COE.

Eligibility:  The competition is open to undergraduate students only, at any of the UC campuses.  Activities during the internship/fellowship must specifically be at the nexus of women’s health gender and empowerment. The internship/fellowship can be conducted domestically or internationally. Applicants must be enrolled at a UC campus for the following academic year (i.e., typically not seniors unless enrolling in a graduate program at one of the UC schools).  10 Awards prioritized 1 for each campus.  Awardees are required to attend the COE’s annual retreat in winter 2017 and make a 5-minute presentation on their internship/project.  Awardees will be matched with a COE mentor, based on the topic of their internship/project. The awardee will be expected to set up at least two meetings (in person or via telephone/Skype) with his/her COE mentor, to take place during the award period; and seek feedback from his/her COE mentor on the project presentation to be made at the annual retreat.

Application Format: Applicants should submit a two-page concept proposal that provides a brief background of the issue(s) to be addressed during the internship/fellowship and a description of the project aims, describes the activities to take place, summarizes the team’s (including the mentor’s) expertise, and gives a timeline. A budget synopsis should also be submitted (not counted against the two-page limit), as well as an updated resume. Additionally, the mentor from the sponsoring organization must submit a letter addressed to the committee describing the resources that will be made available to the intern, including mentorship and equipment. Funds can be used for paying a stipend for unpaid internships, purchasing project supplies, travel (international or domestic), and other reasonable expenses (but typically not for equipment).

Submit proposals by email to Chiao-Wen Lan, (chiaowen@ucla.edu). The application material should be sent as one single word document. All proposals will be evaluated by a review committee made up of CoE members. Results will be announced by May 15, 2017.

Maggie Hobstetter, J.D., M.P.H., served as a Bixby Packard Fellow from 2012-2016, in a dual capacity as Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Specialist with the Bixby Center and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s Population and Reproductive Health Program. Maggie’s research draws on her experience on the Thailand-Burma border, where she conducted research and managed reproductive health projects.

Summary: Women from Burma living in Thailand are generally unable to access safe abortion care—even for cases that clearly fall within the legal exceptions—because of a lack of knowledge of the Thai medical and legal systems, restrictions on travel and movement, the costs associated with the procedure, a dearth of culturally and linguistically compatible providers, and stigma. As a consequence, women from Burma on both sides of the border suffer significant reproductive health morbidities as a result of unsafe abortion. This context motivated the pilot project described in this report. We detail the three-year, collaborative effort by the Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot, Thailand, and a multidisciplinary team of North American reproductive health specialists to determine the feasibility of establishing a referral system for abortion care. We then present the outcomes of more than two dozen cases in which women from Burma who met the criteria for a safe, legal abortion were referred to a qualified and legal Thai providers.

To view the publication and pdf, please click here.

Please see attached information on two opportunities coming up with YLabs, an Oakland based nonprofit that helps governments and local organizations design, evaluate and scale up new ways to improve young peoples’ health and economic futures. Both are working on reproductive health projects and there is funding to support student travel to the field (India, Kenya, Rwanda).

For more information, please view the flyer here.

Based in Baltimore, Maryland, the Senior Technical Coordinator will coordinate and support program, financial, contractual, monitoring and administrative functions for Gates Foundation funded Family Planning Special Projects within Jhpiego Technical Leadership Office’s Family Planning and Reproductive Health (FPRH) Unit.

For more information on qualifications and requirements, follow this link.

Bixby Center’s work, led by Dr. Ndola Prata contributes to Family Planning High Impact Practices’ brief titled “Community Health Workers: Bringing family planning services to where people live and work”. 

Dr. Prata’s work with community health workers in family planning is part of what FP2020 is recommending as a high impact practice to increase contraceptive use.

To view the brief by HIP, click here!

Dr. Ndola Prata and Bixby Research Specialist Karen Weidert have published an article in Global Health: Science and Practice

Title: Women’s Limited Choice and Availability of Modern Contraception at Retail Outlets and Public-Sector Facilities in Luanda, Angola, 2012–2015

Authors: Benjamin Nieto-Andrade, Eva Fidel, Rebecca Simmons, Dana Sievers, Anya Fedorova, Suzanne Bell, Karen Weidert, Ndola Prata

Despite high rates of unintended pregnancy, access to a wide range of contraceptive methods, especially injectables and long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), is severely limited in both public and private facilities. Knowledge of contraceptive choices is likewise limited, yet a substantial proportion of women are not using their preferred method among the methods they know of.

Innovations for Youth (I4Y) has a new website! Click here to check it out: 

I4Y Website

About I4Y:

To address the many challenges adolescents face, Bixby Director Dr. Ndola Prada joined fellow School of Public Health faculty Dr. Colette (Coco) Auerswald (SPH) and Dr. Emily Ozer in co-founding Innovations for Youth (I4Y). I4Y focuses on the social determinants of health, health disparities, connectedness, and networks for adolescents through a multidisciplinary and multigenerational approach. Adolescent health is shaped by social and structural, as well as individual factors – economic inequality, stigma, and more. Policy must address this broad spectrum of health determinants. Unfortunately, the most at-risk populations  including street and out-of-school youth, ethnic minorities, and immigrants  tend to be hard to reach and are often those most ignored by policy and debate. Furthermore, recent improvements to childhood health globally will be wasted if adolescent health outcomes are neglected.

Coupling the Bixby Center’s insights into adolescent reproductive health and behavior with expertise from other disciplines, I4Y strives to address these policy shortcomings and provide today’s young people with best practices in health services designed to improve individual and population health and well-being to help youth and their communities thrive. I4Y allows for efficient and effective collaborative work to address the multidisciplinary nature of the issues facing adolescents and the complexities that some of the interventions may require. I4Y provides a platform to work on designing a blueprint for adolescent health – when, where, and with what message we can intervene to gain improvements in health outcomes.

For more information about I4Y, follow this link!

Ndola Prata, Director of the Bixby Center and Co-Director of I4Y (Innovations for Youth), is partnering with the Rwandan Ministry of Health and Rwandan Biomedical Center to advance options to target youth access to reproductive health services.

Dr. Prata is currently collaborating with the Rwandan Biomedical Center in two districts, Huye and Musanze, to integrate family planning into primary health services for all women. Women coming to a health facility for any reason are offered family planning services and receive other reproductive health services in a single visit.

Examples of of entry service points at a health facility are maternity, ANC, HIV, etc. Next steps are to provide the same critical services to youth, by linking facility-based youth corners to youth centers. These changes to policy present significant advances for woman and youth in the country and serve as a model for the region.

On January 23, 2017, the University of California, Davis hosted the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Conference: Research to Action on the African Continent. The conference featured how academic institutions can play a role in delivering on the UN Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) in three key thematic areas: access to clean energy and water, sustainable food production, and healthy lives and well-being.

Our Director, Dr. Ndola Prata was a speaker at this conference representing UC Berkeley Bixby Center!

The conference focused on Africa and aimed to demonstrate in a concrete fashion and on an international stage how universities can foster interdisciplinary collaborations and solutions.

There was a diverse group of participants including faculty, staff, and students representing Colleges and Schools across the UC Davis campus and from partner institutions: UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco, and Stanford University.

Please follow this link for the SDG Conference website: http://unsdg.ucdavis.edu/index.html and click here for the speaker bios: http://unsdg.ucdavis.edu/UN%20SDG%20Conference%20Bios.pdf