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Ann Starrs and Dr. Susheela Singh of the Guttmacher Institute will present the report Adding It Up: The Costs and Benefits of Investing in Sexual and Reproductive Health, which documents the need for, costs and resulting benefits of investing in a range of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services in 149 developing countries.

Background

The Guttmacher Institute has released  Adding It Up reports every five years since 2004. The most recent report, released in December 2014, documents a large unmet need for contraceptive services, antenatal care, facility-based delivery, selected services for pregnant women living with HIV, safe abortion and post-abortion care (PAC), and sexually transmitted infections (STI) care, among women in the developing world, with poor women bearing the brunt of the resulting maternal and newborn deaths and disability. The report demonstrates that if all women who want to avoid pregnancy used modern contraceptives, and if all pregnant women and their newborns received care at the standards recommended by WHO, the benefits would be dramatic: unintended pregnancies would drop by 70 percent and maternal and newborn deaths would drop by 67 percent and 77 percent respectively.
 
To RSVP for this event, email Aissa Socorro, asocorro@worldbank.org.
 

Join by WebEx

Meeting number: 739 281 497
Password: April13
 

To join by telephone

Toll #: 1-650-479-3207
Access code: 739 281 497
 

Coffee and light snacks will be served. 

 

Presenters

Ms. Ann Starrs, President and CEO, Guttmacher Institute

Ann M. Starrs assumed leadership of the Guttmacher Institute in August 2014, becoming the fifth President and CEO in the 46 years since the organization’s founding. A widely recognized expert in reproductive and maternal health, Ms. Starrs has authored or coauthored numerous papers and commentaries on global health policy issues during her nearly 30 years in the field. She is also a leading global expert on maternal health policy and an influential advocate for the health and rights of women and adolescent girls worldwide. Prior to coming to Guttmacher, she was president of Family Care International, a nongovernmental organization that is dedicated to improving reproductive, maternal and newborn health throughout the developing world. Trained in development economics and demography, Ms. Starrs holds a master’s degree from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and a certificate in demography from Princeton’s Office of Population Research. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Dr. Susheela Singh, Vice President for Research, Guttmacher Institute

Dr. Susheela Singh is the Vice President for Research at the Guttmacher Institute. She has been at the Institute since 1985. She earned her doctorate in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1977 and worked until 1984 at the World Fertility Survey. During her career as a social scientist, she has written and co-authored numerous journal articles, monographs and other publications regarding a wide variety of sexual and reproductive health issues affecting the U.S. and other developed and developing countries. Her current areas of research include the costs and benefits of providing sexual and reproductive health services, documentation of abortion and unplanned pregnancy and their consequences and adolescent sexual and reproductive behavior and need for information and services. More broadly, her work addresses the sexual and reproductive behaviors and goals of women and men, their need for related services and information, and gaps in meeting these needs with a focus on developing countries.

Discussant

Michele Gragnolati, Progam Leader, Health, Nutrition, Population Global Practice, The World Bank Group

Michele Gragnolati is the Global Lead for Population and Development at the World Bank. Before that he was a Program Leader in the World Bank's Health, Nutrition and Population Global Practice, working across several countries in Latin America and Europe, including Argentina, Brazil, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Michele also worked on health, poverty and social protection in South and East Asia. He holds a BA in Economics from Bocconi University in Milan, a M.Sc. in Demography from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. in Population Studies from the Office of Population Research at Princeton University.

Chair

Petra Vergeer, Senior Health Specialist, Health, Nutrition, Population Global Practice, The World Bank Group

Petra Vergeer has worked with the RBF team in HDNHE since August 2009, building capacity of Bank teams on RBF and providing technical support to RBF pilot countries on design and implementation of RBF mechanisms. Petra has particular interest in the area of verification in different RBF schemes. Petra has been working in public health and health system strengthening programs in developing countries since 1994. She worked in countries such as Uganda, Tanzania, Liberia, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Kosovo, Bangladesh and the Solomon Islands.

Materials

 
Adding It Up: The Costs and Benefits of Investing in Sexual and Reproductive Health
Annual Report
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Presentation
Adding It Up: The Costs and Benefits of Investing in Sexual and Reproductive Health
Presentation
Download