More From the Blog

  • April 4, 2018

    The evolution of the U.S. role in crisis response

    Written by
    Patrick Fine, Chief Executive Officer, FHI 360

    The United States has been a leader in humanitarian response since the end of World War II, but how is this role changing and what are the implications?

    In this episode of A Deeper Look, I speak about the evolving U.S. role in humanitarian response with Andrew Natsios, currently executive professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service and director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at Texas A&M University. As the former head of both the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance and the U.S. Agency for International Development, Professor Natsios has a keen understanding of the complexity of international development and its place in U.S. foreign policy.

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  • March 23, 2018

    There’s no more time to waste: Let’s find the missing cases of TB

    Written by
    Otto Chabikuli, Director, Global Health, Population and Nutrition, FHI 360
    Robert Makombe, Technical Advisor, FHI 360

    Tuberculosis (TB) has now overtaken HIV as the world’s leading cause of mortality. There were about 10.4 million TB cases in 2016, despite the fact that TB is an old and often curable disease whose incidence declined in industrialized countries long before the introduction of the TB vaccine and anti-TB drugs. TB continues to disproportionately affect low-income countries. For those of us who work in public health, this is tragic — we ought to be moving forward at a much faster pace to end TB for good.

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  • March 22, 2018

    Three ways to help female teachers in conflict and crisis contexts

    Written by
    Paul Frisoli, Associate Director, Education in Conflict and Crisis, FHI 360
    Anne Smiley, Technical Advisor, Research in Education, FHI 360

    In education in conflict and crisis (EiCC) situations, community members often take on new roles to provide essential education and psychosocial support services to children. This is especially true for female teachers, who are expected to provide academic and nurturing care to their students while also caring for their families and coping with their own social, emotional and material needs. This is a tall order, and female teachers do not receive the support they need to be as effective — and engaged — as possible.

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  • March 7, 2018

    Women as leaders in conflict response

    Written by
    Patrick Fine, Chief Executive Officer, FHI 360

    The international community is not giving enough attention to the impact that humanitarian crises have on women and girls or to the role they play in emergency response. We need to. It’s time to examine how women are disproportionately affected by conflict and emergencies and how they fill the roles of first responders, caregivers and peacebuilders.

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  • February 15, 2018

    To achieve equity in education, we need the right data

    Written by
    Carina Omoeva, Director, Research and Evaluation, Global Education, and Education Policy and Data Center

    A version of this post originally appeared on FHI 360’s R&E Search for Evidence blog.

    As we work to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to education, it is the responsibility of every funding, implementing and research organization internationally to be asking questions about our own contributions to building equity in education. While a great amount of data gets produced in the course of education projects, only a fraction provides the detail that is needed to assess intervention impact on different equity dimensions. At the technical and implementation level, organizations need to capture and use the necessary evidence to understand and respond to inequity in education provision and outcomes.

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  • February 12, 2018

    Building the case for contraceptive technology innovation

    Written by
    Laneta Dorflinger, Distinguished Scientist and Director, Contraceptive Technology Innovation, FHI 360

    Why do women who do not want to get pregnant choose not to use modern family planning methods? While this question is not bounded by geographies, the most recent Guttmacher Institute report, which focused on the low- and middle-income countries, is most illuminating. The two most common answers given by married women were health reasons/side effects or fear of side effects (26 percent) and claims of infrequent sex or not being sexually active (24 percent). Among unmarried women, infrequent sex (49 percent) was the top reason.

    Equally informative are recent FHI 360 findings from a user preference study in Uganda and Burkina Faso showing that 75 percent of women currently using a method would be open to trying new technologies. It quickly becomes clear that existing methods do not satisfactorily address the changing needs of women throughout their 30- to 40-year reproductive journey.

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  • February 8, 2018

    Reducing conflict through equitable education

    Written by
    Anne Smiley, Technical Advisor, FHI 360
    Nina Weisenhorn, Senior Advisor on Education in Crisis and Conflict, USAID

    A version of this post originally appeared on the blog of USAID Education in Crisis and Conflict Network (ECCN). Reprinted with permission.

    The relationship between education inequality and violent conflict is clear: Inequitable access to quality education makes the world less safe. Recent research for UNICEF by FHI 360 found that the likelihood of experiencing violent conflict doubles in countries with high education inequality between ethnic and religious groups, and the reverse is also true; violent conflict increases educational inequalities between groups. Ethnic, religious, and socio-economic divides are clearly problematic, but gender inequality also plays a role: greater equality between males and females decreases the likelihood of conflict by as much as 37%. If the findings are clear, so must be the solutions: It is imperative that the global community find effective ways to address education inequities and tackle the systemic barriers that prevent millions of children around the globe from accessing equitable educational opportunities.

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  • February 7, 2018

    The famine and food security crisis

    Written by
    Patrick Fine, Chief Executive Officer, FHI 360

    Food insecurity is on the rise again. Driven by conflict, the consequences of famine and food insecurity are a central feature of today’s humanitarian crises and complex emergencies.

    In this episode, I talk with Matt Nims, the acting director of Food for Peace at the U.S. Agency for International Development. We discuss the impact of food insecurity on affected populations, the challenges in responding and the promising approaches that can mitigate the severity of a food security crisis.  

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  • February 5, 2018

    Revolutionizing payday: Mobile money’s transformative impact on Liberia’s public workers

    Written by
    Erica Bustinza, Chief of Party, mSTAR/Liberia, FHI 360

    Imagine the following scenario: It’s payday and you want to pick up your salary. But first, you have to navigate a series of deteriorating, hazardous dirt roads to get to the bank. It takes you a few days just to talk to a teller. When you finally do, the teller informs you that the bank is currently out of cash – you’ll have to wait some more. By the time you actually get paid, you’ve had to miss several days of work – and to top it all off, between bank fees (including bribes or unofficial fees to bankers and security guards), the cost of lodging, travel and food, you’ve spent 15 percent of your salary just to pick it up.

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  • January 22, 2018

    Outsmarting TB using research and collaboration

    Written by
    Carol Dukes Hamilton, Director, Scientific Affairs, FHI 360

    A version of this post originally appeared on FHI 360’s R&E Search for Evidence blog.

    Tuberculosis (TB), which in 2016 killed an estimated 1.7 million people, is an ancient disease found in the bones of mummies dug up from Peru. It has evolved with humans, and like other successful organisms, finds ways to avoid death, so it can thrive and spread to the next person. Trying to get ahead of this successful adversary requires pursuing a consistent, aggressive research agenda aided by international collaboration.

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