Social Science
Large-scale Experimental Health Programs 

2005

• Experimental Programs
  Expanding a Successful Health Care Initiative
  What is the best way to help institutions replace poorly functioning policies and programs with ones that have been shown to work well? “In Ghana, we are taking mechanisms that work for individual behavior change and adapting them for the purpose of policy and program change within institutions,” says Population Council demographer James F. Phillips. Phillips and his Council colleagues are collaborating with the Ghana Health Service to help that organization overcome the gap between research and action.

2003

• Experimental Programs
  Innovative Strategies Reduce Fertility in Ghana
  In the early 1990s, surveys conducted in Ghana showed that people’s desire for family planning was largely unfulfilled, despite two decades of policies aimed at making inexpensive family planning services available. Research also showed that mortality in remote rural areas was substantially higher than in urban communities. In response to this situation, the Ghanaian Ministry of Health designed the Community Health and Family Planning experiment at its Navrongo Health Research Centre, a field station in rural northern Ghana. The Population Council provided research support and administered funding for this experiment. “The initial results of the experiment suggest that in a traditional African society provision of primary health services in the local community and intensive social mobilization can make a difference in fertility and ideas and beliefs about reproduction” said James F. Phillips, one of the Council investigators on the study team.

• Programmes Expérimentaux
  Stratégies innovatrices pour réduire la fertilité au Ghana
  Au début des années 1990, les recherches effectuées au Ghana ont montré que les souhaits des populations en matière de planning familial étaient largement insatisfaits, malgré deux décennies de politiques visant à rendre disponibles des services de planning familial peu coûteux. Les recherches ont également montré que la mortalité dans les zones rurales était considérablement plus élevée que dans les communautés urbaines.

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