Transitions to Adulthood
Unexplored Elements of Adolescence in the Developing World
To provide a foundation of information on the lives of young people, the U.S. National Academies published Growing Up Global: The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries in May 2005. The volume detailed the findings of an expert panel—led by Cynthia B. Lloyd, Population Council director of social science research—on transitions to adulthood in developing countries. As part of its three-year information-gathering process, the panel commissioned background papers to provide more focused treatment of certain issues where existing literature was lacking. Ten of these background papers were selected by the editors for publication in a companion volume, The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries: Selected Studies, which was published in December 2005. Some of the most important contributions of the volume are its essays on adolescents in China and on adolescent marriage.
Safe Motherhood
Low Morale Found Among South African Nurses
The emigration of trained professionals poses an ongoing challenge in South Africa. Among nurses, this phenomenon—and the pressure it places on nurses who remain—may be contributing to a high rate of maternal mortality in that country. The Population Council’s Frontiers in Reproductive Health program, in collaboration with the University of Witwatersrand, conducted a study to learn more about the workloads, morale, and career plans of maternity nurses in South Africa.
Aging
Surviving Catastrophe: The Elderly in Cambodia
For a period that began in the early 1970s and lasted more than two decades, the Cambodian people were victims in turn of bloody civil war, genocide and starvation, and renewed civil war. During the reign of the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979, an estimated 1.5 to 2 million people—more than 20 percent of the population—lost their lives. Today, Cambodians endure extreme poverty and one of the highest HIV infection rates in Asia. Many of the people who died during civil strife or because of HIV infection were the spouses, sons, and daughters of the current elderly population. Thus, in addition to having endured extreme trauma, these older people may now lack core family support. However, relatively little systematic data exist on the social and economic situation or the health of Cambodia’s elderly. Population Council demographer Zachary Zimmer and his collaborators conducted the 2004 Survey of Elderly in Cambodia. This study is the first comprehensive examination of the lives of the Cambodian elderly based on a widely representative sample.
HIV/AIDS
Ethical Implications of Working with Children
Few resources exist to help program managers and evaluators deal with the difficult and potentially harmful situations that may arise when working with children affected by HIV/AIDS. At the request of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a steering group was formed composed of representatives of the Horizons program, Family Health International’s IMPACT Program, UNICEF, and USAID to develop practical guidelines for those who work with young people in international settings. The insights and experiences of this group and others working in the field were collected and analyzed in a handbook.
Biomedicine
Council Researchers Wrestle with SUMO
Little is understood about the molecular mechanisms that regulate sperm production—knowledge that would be key to the development of male contraceptives. Recent research conducted in the laboratory of Patricia L. Morris, a cell biologist and pharmacologist at the Population Council’s Center for Biomedical Research, suggests that a protein known as SUMO-1 is involved in numerous aspects of this process. Gaining a greater understanding of SUMO’s role in producing sperm, or spermatogenesis, may lead to insights about male infertility and reveal potential targets for male contraception.
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