Population Research Discovery Seminars

Co-Sponsor(s):

Population Health Initiative

Global family planning indicators play a central role in measuring progress toward universal access to sexual and reproductive health care — but deciding what and how to measure at the global level involves distinctive challenges. Global monitoring requires trade-offs between evolving concepts and priorities in family planning (and sexual and reproductive health and rights more broadly) and the need for standardized measures, comparability across countries and over time, available data, and country engagement and acceptance.

 

The experience of the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), as the custodian agency for family planning indicators under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), illustrates the complexity of selecting and operationalizing global indicators, as well as the practical considerations that arise in compiling and assessing country data to produce internationally comparable estimates. As family planning measurement continues to evolve and calls to revisit established indicators increase, these considerations raise important questions about how conceptual priorities can be translated into measures suitable for global monitoring, which dimensions of family planning can and should be captured through global indicators, and the choices and trade-offs that may shape family planning and sexual and reproductive health measurement beyond the SDG 2030 timeline.

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Jamaica Corker is a demographer and global health strategist whose research explores the intersections of population dynamics, fertility change, reproductive health, migration, and urban health differentials. Her career spans research, policy, and frontline practice across more than a dozen countries, including in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with PSI and in Guinea, first as a Peace Corps Volunteer and later with the CDC and WHO during the West African Ebola outbreak. These experiences have grounded her research in the realities of collecting, interpreting, and applying demographic and health data in complex settings. She has also worked with the Gates Foundation and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Geneva’s Institute of Demography and Socioeconomics. As an independent research and technical consultant, her current work includes family planning measurement with the United Nations Population Division.

Jamaica holds a PhD in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania and an MSc in Population and Development from the London School of Economics.