Between February and July 2020, more than 90 percent of school-going children around the world were affected by school closures. Across settings, the crisis is intersecting with entrenched inequities, and COVID-19 related closures and economic instability pose a threat to areas where there has been important, but uneven progress, such as improvements in primary school enrollment and attainment for girls and the narrowing of gender disparities.   

In an op-ed for Think Global Health, Thoai Ngo, Program Director for the Council’s Poverty, Gender & Youth Program, and graduate intern Charlotte Brasseux, MPH candidate at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, call for a more structured, uniform, and comprehensive approach to collect, report, and analyze COVID-19 data in the U.S.

India now ranks 3rd in the world with the highest number of daily COVID-19 cases.  New Population Council research published in The Lancet Global Health presents a vulnerability index for the management of and response to the COVID-19 epidemic in India, with analyses to the district level. The much-needed index is assisting government efforts to prioritize resource allocation and risk mitigation for those most vulnerable.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK (July 15, 2020) -- New Population Council research shows that the COVID-19 data being collected and reported across the United States (U.S.) is inconsistent and incomplete exposing the country’s inability to analyze and use data to guide its response. These shortcomings further restrict health officials’ ability to understand the key demographic factors that place certain populations and communities at increased risk of contracting and experiencing adverse health outcomes from COVID-19. 

In a blog post for the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI), Council researchers Chi-Chi Undie, Sanyukta Mathur, Nicole Haberland, Isabel Vieitez, and Julie Pulerwitz highlight the tension between the need to gather data to support women facing unprecedented vulnerability in the COVID-19 pandemic, and the reality that the very act of data collection may heighten risk. They also present opportunities for ethical sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) data collection during the pandemic.

In a newly published op-ed in Think Global Health, Council Program Director Thoai Ngo underscores the importance of a United States national response to the COVID-19 pandemic that addresses persistent health and economic inequalities faced by Black and Latinx communities.

All of us at the Population Council are outraged and saddened by the recent incidents of racial violence, police violence, and racism toward Black Americans. As a research organization committed to generating and using evidence to improve the lives of the most marginalized populations around the world, we condemn racism and oppression in all of its forms. We commit to being an active agent of positive change – to understand and challenge the injustices faced by oppressed communities in the United States and around the world, and to generating critical evidence to expose the social and economic inequalities of marginalized communities.   

In a newly published commentary in Global Public Health titled “Men and COVID-19: Adding a gender lens”, Council researchers Julie Pulerwitz and Ann Gottert, along with colleagues from Jhpiego, the Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University Medical Center and the Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs, highlight the unique challenges of the pandemic on men and the potential of strategies in engaging them to address COVID-19-related threats to women’s health and wellbeing.

At the Population Council, we believe that well-designed research is the foundation to solving health and development challenges.  We are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic by taking the tools and strategies we have used to address other global health areas and are rapidly deploying them to address this crisis.

As the number of positive COVID-19 cases and deaths climb in Bangladesh, Sajeda Amin—a researcher and demographer known for her work on child marriage—shared her perspective in a commentary published in Netra News on the disproportionate burden of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic on Bangladeshi women and girls. In the piece, she calls on the world to recognize that women and girls are especially vulnerable to this pandemic and the conditions of these unprecedented times, but also have the potential to help support effective response strategies.