Population Center Seeds New Research
by Leora Lawton, Executive Dirctor of the Berkeley Population Center

The Berkeley Population Center (BPC), founded in 2005, is becoming a hub of activity around population studies. The Center’s core function is generating and supporting funded research. One of BPC’s most important functions is providing funds for pilot projects that ideally will lead to NICHD R01 or R03 grants. BPC offers access to assistance with external grant applications and administration plus provides research support functions for affiliated faculty and their graduate students. Affiliates receive weekly announcements about seminars, conferences, calls for papers and grant opportunities.

A sample of pilot projects demonstrates that population studies encompass a broad spectrum of research interests. In its first year, BPC, along with CEDA, the Robert Wood Johnson Program, and the Center for Health Research, funded projects as disparate as Jonathan Simon’s (Law) “Youth Violence and Neighborhood Change: New Immigrants in Oakland,
California” and Dorothy Thornton and Sylvia Guendelman’s (Public Health) “Obstetric Complications and Preterm Delivery in Californian Women with Depression.” 2008’s diverse scope of projects includes Enrico Moretti’s (Economics) “Changes in Income Inequality and Cost of Living” and Elisabeth Sadoulet’s (Agricultural and Resource Economics) “Returns to Reproductive Health Care.”

Professor Sadoulet’s research well demonstrates BPC’s goals. First, reproductive health falls under one of BPC’s four research themes, Population Health. Second, as a collaboration with graduate student Kelly Jones (Agricultural and Resource Economics), this project demonstrates how BPC researchers train the next generation, to the benefit of all parties. By funding a Graduate Student Researcher, this grant provides a valuable research practicum experience for the student as well as a source of income.

Sadoulet’s and Jones’ study examines the impact of the Bush administration’s 2001 imposition of the so-called “global gag rule” on access and delivery of healthcare, and ultimately the impact of reproductive health care on the health and development of the next generation. (The rule stipulated that the US government will deny funding to any foreign NGO that provides abortions or engages in activism for
abortion rights.)

Reproductive health research seeks healthy outcomes for mothers, children and families. Research has shown that, if infant mortality falls, then women can bear their desired number of children with fewer pregnancies and thus endure less health risk. It also demonstrates that once parents can count on most or all of their children surviving, they bear fewer children.

The global gag rule was immediately lifted by President Obama, thereby allowing for the creation of a quasi-experimental design in a real-world laboratory. While the pilot grant will not look at the lifting of the gag rule, the pilot grant is a precursor to a larger NIH-funded project about policy and delivery.

For more information about the Berkeley Population Center, visit the website, www.popcenter.berkeley.edu, or contact Leora Lawton, Executive Director, at popcenter@berkeley.edu.

Above photo: Mathare Clinic, Nairobi. Photo by Terri Bartlett.