Family Planning

Professor Ndola Prata's exceptional undergraduate students from the PH181 course Poverty and Population this fall semester have communicated with their United States representatives!

December 18, 2025

This fall 2025 semester Professor Ndola Prata has six exceptional undergraduate students from the PH181 course Poverty and Population who have communicated with their United States representatives, expressing their strong arguments for contraceptives as foreign aid for USAID, comprehensive sex education in public schools, abortion pills, community protection from hunger and climate stress, food security and women's access to reproductive care. These students are Rishabh Ganesh Balamitran, Raka Bose, Alyssa Chan, Rosalie Güitrón,...

Using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to Access Google Data and Gain Insights Into Searches on Birth Control in Louisiana and Mississippi, 2014-2018: Infoveillance Study

Ndola Prata
Karen Weidert
Anne Zepecki
Elina Yon
Elizabeth Pleasants
Petrice Sams-Abiodun
Sylvia Guendelman
2025

Background: It is now common to search for health information online. A 2013 Pew Research Center survey found that 77% of online health seekers began their query at a search engine. The widespread use of online health information seeking also applies to women’s reproductive health. Despite online interest in birth control, not much is known about related interests and concerns reflected in the search terms in the United States.

Objective: In this study, we identify the top search terms on Google related to birth control in Louisiana and Mississippi and compare those results to the...

Bixby Center Chair Dr. Ndola Prata Presented Research at the the 30th International Population Conference in Brisbane, Australia.

July 18, 2025
Can Women’s Empowerment Accelerate Fertility Decline in Angola

Ndola Prata, Bixby Center, UC Berkeley
Karen Weidert, University of California, Berkeley

Women’s empowerment has been associated with lower fertility. Angola, a country in middle Africa has a TFR of 6.2. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether women’s empowerment in Angola is associated with fertility preferences. More...

Ndola Prata's undergraduate student exceptional communications!

December 5, 2024

Victoria Lee, Drexler Anthony T. Madamba, Kendy Mendoza, and Hazel Warner, undergraduate students from Ndola Prata's PH181 course, Poverty and Population, have been in touch with Congressional Representatives in Washington DC, Journalist Alisha Haridasani Gupta (New York Times) and Governor Inslee (Washington). Click here to read the students' exceptional work!

Karen Weidert will present a top poster at the Society of Family Planning annual meeting on December 3rd

November 29, 2022

The poster highlights our work using telemedicine to increase access to 1st trimester abortion in Rwanda.

Please click here for the poster.

Reaching the hard to reach

Martha Campbell
Malcolm Potts
Pouru Bhiwandi
1994

PIP: The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development proposed increasing contraceptive couple protection from 550 million in 1995 to 880 million in 2015. The task for family planning (FP) programs is to provide access to services for, sometimes, inaccessible rural populations. FP need based on desire for no more children has ranged from under 20% in Senegal to almost 80% in Peru. Socioeconomic development was found not to be a prerequisite for fertility change. Gender inequalities in education and social autonomy must be changed. FP access is very important among women with...

The fifth freedom revisited: II, The way forward

Malcolm Potts
Allan Rosenfield
1990

PIP: The goal of doubling the number of contraceptive acceptors in the world during the 1990s is achievable if family planning services are made universally accessible and a continuous supply of contraceptives is maintained. With serious attention to the elimination of unwanted pregnancies, the world’s population could stabilize at under 8 billion; without it, the global population will approach 15 billion before stabilization. To counteract the impact of a 30% increase in the numbers of women of fertile age in developing countries during the 1990s, 130 million new contraceptive acceptors...

The fifth freedom revisited: I, Background and existing programmes

Malcolm Potts
1990

In the 25 years since the late Sir Dugald Baird expounded his ideas on a fifth freedom –freedom from the tyranny of excessive fertility-what has happened to family planning services worldwide? Dr Potts and Professor Rosenfield review the policies that have been adopted and suggest realistic strategies for the future.

Published in Lancet, 11 17 1990, 336(8725)

Download PDF, click here.

Religion, family planning, and abortion

Malcolm Potts
1993

Letter to the Lancet

Published in Lancet, 9 25 1993, 342(8874):808

Download PDF, click here.

Letter: Funding international family planning

Malcolm Potts
John Guillebaud
1994

Published in British Medical Journal, 2 26 1994, 308(6928):599

Download PDF, click here.