The United Nations Foundation has made Women and Population a priority program area. Through problem-solving, partnerships, advocacy, and project support the UN Foundation provides assistance to its UN partners to respond to the challenges unique to women and girls. In order to be effective, it has focused on two key areas -- adolescent girls and the quality of health care services. Success is already apparent, and more is emerging as policies create a more enabling environment, networks are forged and strengthened, and interventions change young people’s lives.

Additionally, the UN Foundation has provided cataytic support to mobilizing a response to meet the global shortfall in reproductive health commodities, such as condoms. The UN Foundation has also supported projects that provide women with access to livelihood skills and economic opportunities.

Adolescent Girls
There are 1.5 billion adolescents in the world today. 14 million children are born world wide each year to adolescent girls. Sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, threaten the health and survival of young women and affect the health of their newborns. Girls have limited access to transportation and meager financial resources and face services that are geared to adult women. These factors contribute to unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Girls continue to be disproportionately disadvantaged in their access to education. Girls' living arrangements, domestic roles and responsibilities, social and physical mobility and work are determinants of their well being, their status and their ability to set the terms of sexual relations and childbearing. Extensive research has shown that improvements in the lives of adolescent girls translate into improvements in their health as well as that of their children, reductions in fertility and high returns to overall economic productivity.

The United Nations Foundation’s Women and Population Program supports United Nations efforts to increase socio-economic opportunities for adolescent girls and women while increasing access to and improving the quality of reproductive health and family planning services. The UN Foundation focuses the majority of its resources within the Women and Population Program on adolescent girls, using multifaceted approaches that address their health and human rights. These approaches include: a concentration on livelihood skills; education; youth development; life skills and participation; economic access and empowerment; and reproductive health services and information.

Quality of Care
Improving the quality of reproductive health services is important in terms of development and improves the effectiveness of the services provided. We now know that these services are more effective if, for example, people have access to a range of contraceptive methods and can receive care from someone who explains the potential side effects, gives guidance on how to discuss family planning with their partners or deals with sexual violence.

Often the improvement comes through attitudinal changes that do not require significant new resources. When service providers spend the time to answer questions and work to ensure that an individual's needs are met, the client is more likely to use and benefit from the services available. When people use services the way they are intended, they become even more cost-effective as well.

Recognizing that government-level commitment to a high quality of care for citizens is irreplaceable, the UN Foundation supports UN efforts with national-level structures and governments. The UN Foundation programs have achieved success, as access is increased, and quality is improved - and satisfied health service clients, mean healthier individuals.