Population Council

The Population Council generates ideas, produces evidence, and designs solutions to improve the lives of underserved populations around the world. Under its new strategic plan, it seeks to ensure sexual and reproductive health, rights, and choices by leveraging its long-standing thought leadership, cutting-edge research, and deep networks for evidence use.. (Strategy: Global Reproductive Equity)

This grant will support the Population Council’s program of research, advocacy, and action focusing on Francophone West Africa. Specific activities include research on early pregnancy, capacity building of researchers and organizations, advocacy around safe abortion in Senegal, and participation in regional coordination groups including the Ouagadougou Partnership and le Centre ODAS. This grant is aligned with the Global Reproductive Equity strategy outcome to strengthen the reproductive health ecosystem in Francophone West Africa.

This grant will support the Population Council’s Poverty, Gender, and Youth (PGY) Program to conduct multisectoral intervention research that examines links between adolescent girls’ and young women’s productive and reproductive lives in low- and middle-income countries. PGY researchers in New York and the council’s country offices will apply a gender lens to investigate the enablers and barriers to adolescent girls’ and young women’s well-being; develop tools and processes to facilitate evidence user engagement, including country-level policymakers; and explore the gendered implications of COVID-19 for adolescent girls and young women in the areas of reproductive health and rights, the care economy, and sustainable livelihoods. (Strategy: International Reproductive Health)