Bringing Information to Decisionmakers for Global Effectiveness
With funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the BRIDGE project improves the policy environment on key population and health issues in developing countries. It provides influential audiences in these countries and in the international development community with up-to-date information and the skills to interpret and use it for improving health policies and practices.
The project's activities have five core components: publications and dissemination; gender; population, health, and the environment; the media, and capacity building—each described in more detail below.
Publications and Dissemination
The BRIDGE project offers a steady stream of policy-relevant information for a wide range of developing-country audiences. Publications include both data-rich and interpretive materials that are translated into user-friendly formats, such as wallcharts, policy briefs, and booklets, for nonspecialist audiences. Recent publications have included the 2009 World Population Data Sheet.
Materials are disseminated to more than 17,000 recipients in about 150 countries, representing people and institutions influential in the policy process. (The largest recipient countries are those supported by USAID.) Recipients of the materials regularly provide feedback that the information is used for programming, policy, and educational purposes in diverse countries and settings.
Gender
The BRIDGE project contributes to USAID’s work to promote gender equity by disseminating information through electronic and print formats, and organizing outreach events on specific gender-related issues. PRB produces, disseminates, and publicizes gender-related products, through the Interagency Gender Working Group (IGWG) and directly. Products include policy briefs, web articles, a website and listserv. An official at USAID has said, "I tell everyone I see that it is the best listserv on women’s issues I have ever encountered." Topics covered include gender-based violence, involving men and boys in reproductive health, gender and HIV/AIDS, and early marriage.
Population, Health, and Environment
PRB's Population, Health, and Environment program aims to inform decisionmakers, program managers, journalists, and the public about population, health, and environment interactions, promote a better understanding of these complex issues, and explore innovative ways they can be addressed. The BRIDGE Project supports these objectives through dissemination, outreach, capacity building, and work with the media.
Media
PRB works with members of the news media in developing countries to help them understand and cover reproductive health and other population-related issues. PRB has done this by establishing networks of journalists and, through seminars, giving them the skills and information needed to cover the issues effectively. PRB also sponsors journalists to cover relevant international and regional conferences. BRIDGE-funded media activities produced more than 1,000 print and broadcast stories on family planning, reproductive health, and related issues between 2003 and mid-2006.
BRIDGE supports PRB’s media network, Women's Edition, which was launched in 1993 to bring together senior-level women editors and broadcast producers from influential media outlets in developing countries to examine and report on population and women’s health issues twice yearly. BRIDGE also supports other media networks and activities in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Haiti. Read more
Capacity Building
PRB’s Fellows Program in Population Policy Communications bridges the gap between research findings and the policy process by training developing-country nationals who are working on their PhD dissertations in the United States. Fellows participate in a two-week, policy communications workshop in Washington, D.C.; conduct a policy-relevant research project; and formally present their work at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America. In addition, an International Program Fellow is selected every year to work in the Office of Population and Reproductive Health at USAID.
PRB conducts regional and country-specific policy communications workshops to strengthen the ability of researchers and program managers to communicate results and lessons learned to decisionmakers. Funded by the BRIDGE Project, workshops have been held in Thailand, Burkina Faso, Uganda, and Kenya. Thematic policy communication workshops are also conducted on topics such as gender-based violence, male involvement in contraception, female genital cutting, and more. Read more
Over the last four years, PRB has contributed substantially to the institutional capacity of the National Council for Population Development (NCAPD) in Nairobi, Kenya. Technical assistance from BRIDGE has helped the organization disseminate and use findings from the Kenya Demographic and Health Surveys; create a database of more than 800 Kenyan NGOs working in population, health, gender, and the environment; and advocate for policy change. NCAPD’s priorities now include repositioning family planning, securing adequate reproductive health commodities, combating gender-based violence, and exploring population, health, and environment linkages.
Contact: James Gribble, 202-483-1100.