Health and Family

Foundation programs addressing health and family issues are the oldest women's programs, though they have not always been classified as such. Years before the Foundation as a whole focused on women's rights and needs, the Population Office made contraception a grant-making priority. Beginning in the 1980s, the Foundation's work on health and family issues changed significantly. Because family-planning services had become a concern of governments around the world, the Foundation redefined its role in the population field. Staff members decided to concentrate on the determinants of fertility more broadly and on "high risk" populations—teenage parents and mothers likely to give birth to low-weight babies.

The Child Survival/Fair Start (CS/FS) program, a major Foundation initiative launched in 1982, evolved from the Foundation's Nutrition Task Force and from the Population Office's efforts to encourage access to contraception and family planning. The basic objective of the many CS/FS demonstrations in the United States has been to reduce the incidence of low birth weight and to promote breast-feeding and intellectual stimulation of the very young. In the Third World, programs have sought to reduce infant mortality by providing poor families with knowledge of good nutrition and health care. In both the United States and abroad, Foundation-supported projects stress self-reliance and community assistance in coping with health problems. Although not formally designated "women's programs," these projects have benefited women by reducing unwanted pregnancies and the burden of sickly children. They have also encouraged women to organize and work for changes in other areas of their lives. Having formed around questions of good nutrition and health practices, mothers' groups may go on to start income-generating projects.

The Foundation's programs for teenage parents in the United States also began with models tested during the 1970s, which by the 1980s had grown into major national demonstrations. Programs such as Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation's Project Redirection have tried to help parents and their children avoid the damaging consequences of early pregnancy by providing child care and encouraging teenagers to return to school or train for jobs. In addition to working with teenagers who already have children, the Foundation has begun funding experimental efforts to help teens avoid unwanted pregnancies. Grants are testing the effectiveness of school-based programs of sex education and counseling for