Population Council Research that makes a difference

In addition to supplements produced by the Council's Population and Development Review, the Council publishes a wide range of books, manuals, and courses. Selected resources are organized below by broad program area. Search Publications/Resources for additional books/manuals/courses published by the Population Council. Contact us at publications@popcouncil.org with any questions.

Supplements to Population and Development Review

A complete list of PDR supplements is available on the PDR supplements page.

HIV and AIDS

MARPs Sensitization: A Diversity Training Guide for Health Care Providers in Nigeria (2012) (PDF)
This training manual aims to educate and equip health care providers with the necessary skills and knowledge to provide a friendly, non-stigmatizing environment and responsive health services to most-at-risk populations particularly men who have sex with men (MSM) as well as MSM's unique needs within the Nigerian health care setting.

Using Capture-Recapture Methodology for Enumerating Most-at-Risk Populations (MARPs) (2012) (PDF)
This tool defines and describes the 'capture-recapture' method of estimating the prevalence of a trait in a population. This method has been found useful in estimating the sizes of hard-to-reach and stigmatized human populations.

HIV Testing, Treatment and Prevention: Generic Tools for Operational Research (2009) (PDF)
This toolkit was developed for operational research on topics related to HIV treatment and prevention. The toolkit includes a main document that is intended to serve as a basis for formulating research questions and designing operational research projects to address them as well as data collection instruments.

Ethical Approaches to Gathering Information from Children and Adolescents in International Settings: Guidelines and Resources (2005) (PDF)
This manual discusses the ethical challenges to working with children and proposes practical responses to address them based on field experiences and a wide variety of resources.

Designing HIV/AIDS Intervention Studies: An Operations Research Handbook (2002) (PDF)
This handbook is a resource for HIV/AIDS researchers that can be used in workshops and courses on research design and proposal development.

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

From Research, to Program Design, to Implementation: Programming for Rural Girls in Ethiopia—A Toolkit for Practitioners (2011) (PDF)
Toolkit describing how to build or improve programs for rural adolescent girls in Ethiopia with a view to increasing the number of programs for rural girls and making them more relevant and context-appropriate.

Young Women: Your Future, Your Money: Workbooks for Girls (2011) (PDFs for Kenya: ages 10–14; ages 15–19) (PDFs for Uganda: ages 10–14; ages 15–19)
Workbooks designed to help young girls learn how to save money and gain financial literacy.

Girl-Centered Program Design: A Toolkit to Develop, Strengthen & Expand Adolescent Girls Programs (2010)
This toolkit is for practitioners who work with, or are planning to work with, adolescent girls 10 to 24. The toolkit provides information on designing programs to target adolescent girls, content area suggestions, and guidance on monitoring and evaluation.

It's All One Curriculum: Guidelines and Activities for a Unified Approach to Sexuality, Gender, HIV, and Human Rights Education (2010)
Developed by the International Sexuality and HIV Curriculum Working Group, this curriculum includes guidelines and activities for a unified approach to sexuality, gender, HIV, and human rights.

Investing When It Counts: Generating the Evidence Base for Policies and Programmes for Very Young Adolescents (2006) (PDFs: English, Spanish)
This book makes the case for investing in new research and interventions targeting very young adolescents (10 to 14). It includes recent research findings, a discussion of the ethical issues in working with this age group, and data collection approaches and methods.

Reproductive Health

Family Planning Programs for the 21st Century: Rationale and Design (2012)
This publication makes the case for increased funding and support for family planning and provides a roadmap to policymakers and donors interested in implementing high-quality programs.

Balanced Counseling Strategy Plus (2012)
The Balanced Counseling Strategy Plus was adapted from the Balanced Counseling Strategy to include counseling on prevention, detection, and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV, in addition to family planning.

Reference Guides for Health Care Organizations Seeking Accreditation for High-Quality, Gender-Sensitive Reproductive Health Services (2009)
These reference guides provide guidance to help health care organizations and NGOs implement high-quality, gender-sensitive standards to achieve certification for their member clinics and administrative centers. This manual includes a procedures guide, a self-training guide, an assessment guide, and a costing guide.

ECP Handbook: Introducing and Mainstreaming the Provision of Emergency Contraceptive
Pills in Developing Countries (2009) (PDF) (PDF en français)
This handbook provides comprehensive guidance to reproductive health program managers and policymakers on introducing and mainstreaming ECP, including needs assessments and operations research, drug registration, training and logistics, and introduction of ECP scale-up.

Assessing Integration Methodology (AIM): A Handbook for Measuring and Assessing the Integration of Family Planning and Other Reproductive Health Services (2008) (PDF)
The AIM handbook was developed by the Population Council to guide decisions regarding the feasibility, quality, and effectiveness of specific service combinations, including HIV counseling and testing, postabortion care, antenatal care, detection and management of sexually transmitted infections, and postpartum care.

Balanced Counseling Strategy (2008)
The Balanced Counseling Strategy (BCS) is a practical, interactive, client-friendly counseling strategy that uses three key job aids (visual memory aids) for counseling clients about family planning.

Financial Sustainability for Reproductive Health NGOs (2008)
This course on financial sustainability for reproductive health NGOs includes presentations and exercises to introduce participants to tools and techniques, as well as group work focused on program-specific research problems and operations research.

Introducing Systematic Screening to Reduce Unmet Health Needs: A Manager's Manual (2008) (PDFs: English, en français, en español)
This training manual is intended to provide guidance for program managers, supervisors, and providers who wish to integrate systematic screening into their health services. It includes a sample screening form and training plan.

Manual for Building Capacity of Trainers and Program Managers in Emergency Contraception (2008) (PDF)
This manual offers guidance to trainers and clinical professionals on how to provide emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs) in a South and Southeast Asian setting.

Operations Research for Managers of Reproductive Health Programs (2008)
This course aims to familiarize health program managers and decision makers with the principles and vocabulary of operations research and improve the quality of the manager-researcher interaction to increase the use of operations research as a program improvement tool.

Scientific Writing for Reproductive Health Programs/Redacción científica para programas de salud reproductiva (2008)
This course teaches a formula for organizing a report or article, and is appropriate for social scientists at various career levels—from graduate students to experienced researchers.

Progress of Postabortion Care in Latin America and the Caribbean: Researching, Applying, and Expanding (2007) (PDF en español)
This book documents strategies from countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to improve the quality and effectiveness of postabortion care (PAC) services; it may interest PAC program directors, health providers, policymakers, and those interested in improving the quality of PAC services.

Willingness to Pay for Reproductive Health Programs (2007)
This CD-ROM contains documents related to the "willingness to pay" (WTP) technique for measuring client response to proposed price changes, and includes unpublished materials produced by Family Health International, Population Council, and The Constella/Futures Group International

A Client-centered Approach to Reproductive Health: A Trainer's Manual (2005) (PDF)
This manual helps trainers conduct training programs in the client-centered approach to reproductive health. In addition to modules that present step-by-step activities to help participants master different concepts, the information presented ranges from a practical listing of the tools required to short presentations on topics that the trainer will want to be familiar with during the training.

Sexually Transmitted and Other Reproductive Tract Infections: A Guide to Essential Practice (2005) (PDF)
This publication is intended to assist health care managers and practitioners to meet the needs of individuals who may be at risk of RTIs. The guide includes basic information on STIs/RTIs; advice on addressing STI/RTI through RH clinics; and how to diagnose and treat STI/RTI related problems.

Willingness to Pay Surveys for Setting Prices for Reproductive Health Products and Services: A User’s Manual (revised edition, 2004) (PDF) 
This document describes in detail how to design, develop, implement, and analyze Willingness to Pay Surveys, with the aim of enabling program managers to make pricing decisions based on empirical information.

Handbook for Family Planning Operations Research Design (1998) (PDF)
This second edition of the Handbook is designed to help health and family planning researchers develop and write a detailed operations research proposal; to help program administrators and managers understand the process of operations research and its use; and to provide a review of key concepts and important methods for conducting field research.