Former USAID Leaders Call on Obama to Double Family Planning Investment

RESOURCES

April 21 Audio Press Conference

WASHINGTON - President Obama should move as soon as possible to meet “enormous pent-up and growing demand” for family planning services worldwide if global anti-poverty goals are to be met, five former directors of the Population and Reproductive Health Program of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) said.

In a joint report, entitled Making the Case for U.S. International Family Planning Assistance, the five development experts urged the new president to restore U.S. world leadership in family planning by doubling U.S. investment in the contraceptive supply and reproductive health programs run in 50 countries by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“This would represent an appropriate American contribution to international efforts to achieve the global consensus Millennium Development Goal target of universal access to reproductive health services, including family planning, by 2015,” the report said.

The five, who successively directed USAID’s Population and Reproductive Health Program from 1978 through 2006, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, noted that U.S. and other donors’ investment in family planning had stagnated or declined in recent years.

This, they said, resulted “in part from the (mistaken) belief that rapid global population growth has halted; from diversion of resources to other needs…and from lack of understanding that family planning is not only essential for women’s health but also a critical part of any successful economic development strategy.”

The report recommended that the fiscal 2008 appropriation of $457 million for family planning rise to $1.2 billion by 2010 and $1.5 billion by 2014 as USAID expands the work into 17 more countries. Such an investment would provide high short-term and long-term returns by reducing the number of unintended pregnancies and saving millions of lives, the report said.

Authors of the report, their years of service as Directors of USAID’s Office of Population, and their current work are: J. Joseph Speidel (1978-1983), now an adjunct professor at the University of California at San Francisco; Steven Sinding (1983-1986), now Senior Fellow at the Guttmacher Institute; Duff Gillespie (1986-1993), now a professor at Johns Hopkins University; Elizabeth Maguire (1993-1999), now President and CEO of Ipas; and Margaret Neuse (2000-2006), now an independent consultant.

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