Publications Available Online
Executive Summary of the Final Report: Parent Involvement in Head Start
Parker F.L., Piotrkowski C., Kessler-Sklar S., Baker A., Peay L., and Clark B.
The National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) Center for the Child, 1997.
Introduction: Head Start is a comprehensive, federally funded program for low-income families with children. Since its inception during President Johnson's War on Poverty, Head Start has served as a model for the delivery of comprehensive child development services... The National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) Center
for the Child, in collaboration with the Bush Center in Child Development and Social Policy at Yale University, undertook the [five-year] Head Start Parent Involvement Project in 1990 to explore this virtually untapped area [of the role of parents as mediators]...
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The Design and Evaluation of Maternal Mortality Programs
Deborah Maine, Murat Akalin, Victoria Ward, Angela Kamara
A manual from the Center for Population and Family Health and UNDP, 1997
From the preface: This is a technical document with a development aim. In its technical sense, the manual provides guidance and tools for the design and evaluation of maternal mortality programs -- it is about what practitioners call "operations research" or "health systems research." But its broader purpose is one of development -- to enhance the ability of people and institutions in developing countries to identify key challenges and generate effective responses to them. The manual offers away of thinking about project design and evaluation, rather than just a set of instructions and forms to do it. In both its form and its function, the manual is about building capacity and ownership. With it, technical cooperation resources can be used to support local development efforts more effectively.
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main section, 333K
Appendix A, 672K
Appendix B, 672K
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Stretching the Limits of Health Interventions in Burkina Faso
Sally Findley, Ahmed Zayan, Maria Kere, Youssof Kone, and Gaston Sogbo
Health Transition Review, v7 n1, April 1997
Opening paragraph: Many health programs in developing countries share the common goals of reducing infant and child mortality. But there is no consensus on the most effective way to attain these goals.
After regarding the historical evidence, some contend that improvements in child survival are most strongly associated with a wide range of social and cultural changes, such as changes in attitudes to child rearing, in expectations regarding future support for parents from children, and in women's expectations for themselves
and for their children, often stimulated as part of the literacy revolution (Ewbank and Preston 1990; Basu and Basu 1991; Caldwell 1979, 1986). Of all the social factors associated with child mortality reductions, maternal education, specifically literacy, has been singled out as one of the most important. In studies conducted in diverse locations such as Bangladesh, India, Mexico, Nigeria, and Zambia, strong correlations have been found between maternal education and child mortality (Lindenbaum 1990; Jain 1994; LeVine et al. 1994). From the findings of these researchers, public health practitioners have advocated child health programs that are
implemented in combination with a range of developmental interventions that will stimulate the kinds of social and cultural change believed to be the key to facilitating changes in health attitudes and behaviour.
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Setting Priorities in International Reproductive Health Programs: A Practical Framework
Therese McGinn, Deborah Maine, James McCarthy, and Allan Rosenfeld July 1996
This document was prepared in response to the International Conference on Population and Development's Programme of Action. The international health community has embraced this mandate of comprehensive, women-centered reproductive health, but they recognize the challenges inherent in carrying it out. Changing
long-standing organizational priorities (and the structures, strategies and services corresponding to them) requires resources, additional skills and the development and appreciation of new tools. The call for a practical framework to help policy makers and program planners set program priorities is clear. 'Setting Priorities' proposes
a process to be used in making such decisions.
Using the Programme of Action as a starting point, this framework identifies key factors that should influence the decision to implement an intervention ( importance of the reproductive health problem, efficacy of potential interventions, program requirements, costs, capacity of the health system and, finally, cultural, policy and legal
factors. It describes how they contribute to setting priorities in health programs. The process is illustrated using the example of induced abortion-related morbidity and mortality.
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Abstracts from the Prevention of Maternal Mortality Network Results Conference
Edited by Deborah Maine, et al.
Presented in Accra, Ghana, June 1996
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Recent Fertility Change in Ireland
James McCarthy, Center for Poulation and Family Health
Jo Murphy-Lawless, Centre for Women's Studies, Trinity College, Dublin
Abstract: Using data from vital statistics from the Republic of Ireland, this paper describes the substantial changes in marriage and fertility that have taken place in Ireland over the last twenty years. Between 1975 and 1995, the Total Fertility Rate in Ireland declined from 3.55 to 1.87, a decline of almost 50 percent that effectively ended Ireland¹s position as the high fertility outlier in Europe, a position it had held at least since the beginning of the twentieth century. This decline in overall fertility was the net result of sometimes dramatic changes in more refined indicators of fertility and marriage behavior. Both first marriage rates and marital fertility rates declined throughout the period. However, non-marital fertility increased among women of all reproductive ages, with 20 percent of all births in 1995 occurring to never-married women. Although changes in marriage, marital fertility and non-marital fertility all contributed to overall fertility change in Ireland, changes in marital fertility made the greatest contribution to the overall decline. Changing marriage patterns also contributed to lower fertility, whereas increases in non-marital had a smaller effect, in the opposite direction.
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