Sexuality, Reproduction, Fertility, and Families

What factors influence decisions to enter into a sexual relationship, have a child, cohabit, or end a marriage? Critical to understanding population change is understanding sexuality, reproduction, fertility, and family formation and dissolution. CPC faculty fellows study the development of sexuality, gender identity, and sexual orientation across the life course, choices about entering relationships, becoming pregnant and formalizing a union, and the social, biological, and cultural factors that influence how sexually transmitted infections spread.

Associated Projects

Project	Principal Investigator	Description	Tags	Countries
Add Health Parent Study: Phase I	Kathleen Mullan Harris	The Add Health Parent Study (2015-2017), gathered social, behavioral, and health survey data in 2015-2017 on a probability sample of the Add Health parents who were originally interviewed in 1995.	Demography, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Race/Gender/Age/SES	United States of America
Agricultural intervention for food security and HIV health outcomes in Kenya	Harsha Thirumurthy	Despite major advances in care and treatment for those living with HIV, morbidity and mortality among people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV) remain unacceptably high in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), largely due to the parallel challenges of poverty and food insecurity.	Interventions and Evaluation, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES
Cash Transfers for Adolescent Girls and young Women to Reduce Sexual Risk in Tanzania: A Qualitative and Behavioral Economics Assessment of the CARE Study	Audrey E. Pettifor	Examining the experiences of adolescent girls and young women who were part of the CARE Study.	Biomarkers, Interventions and Evaluation, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	United Republic of Tanzania
Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey	Linda S. Adair	A longitudinal study following new mothers and their infants over 30+ years of life course development.	Biomarkers, Interventions and Evaluation, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	Philippines
China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS)	Barry M. Popkin; Penny Gordon-Larsen	CHNS examines how the social and economic development of Chinese society is affecting the health of its population.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	China
Data for Impact (D4I)	Siân L. Curtis	We strengthen the technical and organizational capacity of local partners to collect, analyze, and use data to support their move to self-reliance.	Data Science, Interventions and Evaluation, Race/Gender/Age/SES	Bangladesh, Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe
Early Life Mortality in the United States	Robert Hummer	This project seeks to better understand early life mortality (ages 0-24) in the United States in the context of substantial racial/ethnic inequality and very rapid socioeconomic and family changes that have occurred in recent decades.	Race/Gender/Age/SES	United States of America
Ecuador Projects	Stephen J. Walsh; Richard E. Bilsborrow	This program investigates the social, economic, and demographic effects on land use change among colonist and indigenous communities in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	Ecuador
Evaluation of a Quality Improvement Maternal and Newborn Health Intervention in Ethiopia	Kavita Singh Ongechi	Studying the impact of QI efforts to improve maternal and newborn health.	Interventions and Evaluation
From Biological to Social Processes: Interdisciplinary Training in Life Course Research	Robert Hummer; Allison Aiello	A scientific training program for both predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees which integrates both social and biological/health sciences research approaches for improving the understanding of health and well-being across the life course.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	North Carolina, United States of America
Full Access, Full Choice: Increasing Youth's Access to Expanded Method Choice	Ilene S. Speizer	The project will help fill gaps in existing global, country, and program-level data and information to support future evidence-informed investments on expanded contraceptive method choice among youth.	Race/Gender/Age/SES
Impact of the Malawi Social Cash Transfer on Beneficiaries' Vulnerabilities Throughout the Life Cycle	Clare Barrington	Identfying vulnerable sub-groups receiving unconditional cash transfers in Malawi, and identifying ways in which the Social Cash Transfer Programme can enhance its positive effect on their well-being.	Interventions and Evaluation, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	Malawi
Improving dialogue and accountability with a youth-led community score card in Western Kenya	Kat Tumlinson	The proposed innovation seeks to improve service delivery by changing the attitude and behavior of public sector healthcare providers when attending to young and unmarried family planning patients.	Interventions and Evaluation	Kenya
Longer Term Effects of a Natural Disaster on Health and Socio-Economic Status	Elizabeth Frankenberg	This project will collect and analyze data from Sumatra, Indonesia, on how children and prime-age adults are affected by and respond to a large-scale natural disaster, the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004, which killed an estimated 160,000. The Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR) is a longitudinal survey of individuals, households, communities, and facilities in the provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra, Indonesia.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	Indonesia
MEASURE Evaluation	James Thomas	MEASURE Evaluation’s mission is to contribute to better health for people living in low-income countries by assisting governments and health institutions to generate and use information to change what doesn’t work and to scale up what does.	Data Science, Interventions and Evaluation, Multi-level Approaches	Angola, Armenia, Bangladesh, Barbados, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, Burundi, Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon, China, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominican Republic, Eastern Caribbean, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mexico, Republic of Moldova, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Nigeria, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, United Republic of Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, Ukraine, Viet Nam, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Measurement, Learning & Evaluation (MLE) Project for the Urban Reproductive Health Initiative	David K. Guilkey	The evaluation component of the Urban Reproductive Health Initiative (URHI), a multi-country program in India, Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal that aimed to improve the health of the urban poor between 2010 and 2015.	Interventions and Evaluation	India, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal
Measurement, Learning and Evaluation (MLE) the BMGF Family Planning Country Action Portfolio	Siân L. Curtis	The Urban Reproductive Health Initiative links country-level consortia with evaluation experts on the Measurement, Learning & Evaluation (MLE) Project who will identify the most effective country-level approaches, facilitate knowledge sharing, and build a robust evidence base to shape future urban family planning, reproductive health, and integrated maternal and newborn health programs.	Interventions and Evaluation
Monitoring Social Change: Health, Reproduction, Aging	Barry M. Popkin	Adding a follow-up survey to collect and analyze biomarker data from participants in the China Health Nutrition Study.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	China
Multilevel mechanisms of HIV acquisition in young South African women	Audrey E. Pettifor	Identifying social determinants and their pathways of effect that shape HIV risk among young women in sub-Saharan Africa, a population that bears an enormous burden of disease.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	South Africa
Nang Rong Projects	Stephen J. Walsh; Ronald R. Rindfuss; Barbara Entwisle	A team collected information from more than 50,000 individuals as well as from administrative records, meteorological data, satellite images, and many other sources over a span of 20 years in the Nang Rong district in northeast Thailand.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	Thailand
National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health	Kathleen Mullan Harris	The Add Health Wave V Program Project will add new data to the existing longitudinal multilevel social, behavioral, biological, and genetic data to create an unparalleled scientific resource for investigating the developmental origins of health and disease.	Biomarkers, Interventions and Evaluation, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	United States of America
Reducing racial-ethnic disparities in sugar-sweetened beverage intake: the impact of nutrition claims on fruit drink purchases among parents of young children	Lindsey Smith Taillie	This project will inform policies to reduce sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) intake among children ages 1-5 years, with a long-term goal of reducing racial-ethnic disparities in childhood obesity.	Race/Gender/Age/SES
Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey of HSE (RLMS-HSE)	Barry M. Popkin	The RLMS is a household-based longitudinal survey designed to measure the effects of Russian reforms on the economic well-being of households and individuals.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	Russian Federation
Service Delivery Factors Influencing Contraceptive Use Dynamics in Developing Countries: A Mixed-Methods and Cross-Disciplinary Approach	Kat Tumlinson	Results of this project will redefine traditional approaches to assessing the quality of family planning service delivery in developing countries and quantify the impact of service quality on contraceptive continuation.	Multi-level Approaches	Kenya
Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity, Socioeconomic Status, and Health Across the Life Course	Carolyn Tucker Halpern	Exploring how sexual orientation/gender identity and socioeconomic status intersect and contribute to health and disease across the life course.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	United States of America
Southern Immigrant Academic Adaptation Study (SIAA)	Krista M. Perreira	SIAA is a population-based study examining of the daily acculturation experiences and academic adaptation of Latino youth in a new receiving community.	Longitudinal/Life-Course, Race/Gender/Age/SES	North Carolina, United States of America
Supporting Evidence-based Policy Making in sub-Saharan Africa through the Transfer Project	Gustavo Angeles	A multi-country cash transfer research initiative to find out if and how cash transfers impact other aspects of people's lives.	Interventions and Evaluation, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES
Transfer Project	Sudhanshu (Ashu) Handa	The Transfer Project is a multi-country cash transfer research initiative.	Biomarkers, Interventions and Evaluation, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES
Understanding and Addressing the Multilevel Influences on Uptake and Adherence to HIV Prevention Strategies among Adolescent Girls and Young Women in SubSaharan Africa	Ilene S. Speizer	We propose a 5-year clustered randomized trial with a factorial design to evaluate the efficacy of a multi-level intervention that addresses stigma in accessing health care; social support and individual-risk behaviors.	Biomarkers, Interventions and Evaluation, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES
Understanding the risk profile of young women's male partners in rural South Africa.	Audrey E. Pettifor	Assessing the empirical data on the male partners of young women in sub-Saharan African who are at very high risk of HIV infection.		South Africa