The Population Council today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted for review its one-year Nestorone® / ethinyl estradiol vaginal ring for pregnancy prevention. If approved, the contraceptive vaginal ring would be the first contraceptive option that provides a full year of protection against unintended pregnancy while fully under a woman’s control.

A new feature at the Christian Science Monitor explores how young women are leading the effort to end child marriage in Guatemala, highlighting the Population Council's Abriendo Oportunidades project.

A new male contraceptive option “may be on the horizon,” TIME writes of the Council’s combination Nestorone® and Testosterone gel in development.

Newsweek aggregates a recent report from the MIT Technology Review about the Council’s male contraceptive gel in development.

MIT Technology Review reports on the new male hormonal contraceptive gel developed by the Population Council in collaboration with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) advancing to Phase II clinical trials.

In a post at the World Bank Education for Global Development blog, the Population Council's Stephanie Psaki, PhD expands on new research that indicates that gender parity in educational attainment may mask other important inequalities. 

A new feature on NPR’s Goats & Soda health and development blog explores “how chickens and goats are helping to stop child marriage” in East Africa, focusing on Population Council’s years of research on the effectiveness of various interventions to empower girls and delay child marriages.

The Population Council announces the appointment of leading South African AIDS researcher, Salim S. Abdool Karim, to the Council Board of Trustees. Dr. Karim, a clinical infectious diseases epidemiologist is the Director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), CAPRISA Professor of Global health at Columbia University in New York and Honorary Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. 

Recently, efforts to develop multi-purpose technologies (MPTs) have hit important milestones. At the New York Times "Women in the World," Pamela M. Norick details the Population Council's first in-human trial of griffithsin, a naturally occuring protein as one of the many exciting developments by intrepid doctors and scientists in the ongoing effort to prevent HIV.

In Tanzania, there are 1.4 million people living with HIV (4.7% prevalence). While the country has made incredible strides in addressing the epidemic, adolescent girls and young women continue to be disproportionately affected by and vulnerable to HIV: HIV prevalence triples from age 15-19 to age 20-24 from 1.3% to 4.4%.