Health
and Family
Foundation
programs addressing health and family issues are the oldest women's
programs, though they have not always been classified as such.
Years before the Foundation as a whole focused on women's rights
and needs, the Population Office made contraception a grant-making
priority. Beginning in the 1980s, the Foundation's work on health
and family issues changed significantly. Because family-planning
services had become a concern of governments around the world, the
Foundation redefined its role in the population field. Staff
members decided to concentrate on the determinants of fertility
more broadly and on "high risk" populations—teenage parents
and mothers likely to give birth to low-weight babies.
The Child
Survival/Fair Start (CS/FS) program, a major Foundation initiative
launched in 1982, evolved from the Foundation's Nutrition Task
Force and from the Population Office's efforts to encourage access
to contraception and family planning. The basic objective of the
many CS/FS demonstrations in the United States has been to reduce
the incidence of low birth weight and to promote breast-feeding and
intellectual stimulation of the very young. In the Third World,
programs have sought to reduce infant mortality by providing poor
families with knowledge of good nutrition and health care. In both
the United States and abroad, Foundation-supported projects stress
self-reliance and community assistance in coping with health
problems. Although not formally designated "women's programs,"
these projects have benefited women by reducing unwanted
pregnancies and the burden of sickly children. They have also
encouraged women to organize and work for changes in other areas of
their lives. Having formed around questions of good nutrition and
health practices, mothers' groups may go on to start
income-generating projects.
The
Foundation's programs for teenage parents in the United States also
began with models tested during the 1970s, which by the 1980s had
grown into major national demonstrations. Programs such as Manpower
Demonstration Research Corporation's Project Redirection have tried
to help parents and their children avoid the damaging consequences
of early pregnancy by providing child care and encouraging
teenagers to return to school or train for jobs. In addition to
working with teenagers who already have children, the Foundation
has begun funding experimental efforts to help teens avoid unwanted
pregnancies. Grants are testing the effectiveness of school-based
programs of sex education and counseling for