Letter from Bryant Robey, Editor Emeritus of Population Reports

For more than 25 years Population Reports has helped to meet the information needs of health care professionals in developing countries-information about contraceptive methods, family planning programs, HIV/AIDS, survey findings, population and the environment, and other topics vital to the reproductive health field.

As the field has changed, so has Population Reports. At first, the effort was to make key information found primarily in scientific journals and other scholarly publications in developed countries available to professionals in developing countries. Many developing countries were just beginning to build effective family planning programs, while little was known about reproductive health care conditions and needs. Information about family planning was scarce, and Population Reports found the most authoritative information and brought it to people who needed it. Over the years, the publication has become the largest-circulation publication in the population field and has maintained a reputation as a source of authoritative and well-documented evidence for reproductive health policy-makers and program managers.

In recent years, an information revolution and a reproductive revolution have transformed the role of Population Reports, as it has transformed the information needs of reproductive health care professionals around the world. Contraceptive use has become widespread in most countries; family planning programs increasingly are seeking to improve the quality of care and to extend access. The AIDS epidemic has brought a new set of challenges for health care providers. Increasingly, international agencies and national governments are addressing such issues as maternal health, infant and child survival, gender, and life skills education for young people. At the same time, the amount of survey data from developing countries have expanded dramatically, the number of scientific articles available has soared, and access to information has exceeded anything imagined a decade or two ago.

In response, the role of Population Reports has changed from filling an information void to selecting crucial information and making it available to those who need it most-when they need it most. In particular, the publication covers three types of topics, at least once each year for each type of topic:

1. Emerging issues in an "agenda-setting" approach-summarizing the problem or challenge, presenting key evidence about it, including data, analysis, country studies and lessons learned from experience, reporting consensus opinion or alternative opinions where there is no consensus.
2. Contraceptive technology updates-keeping readers up to date with the latest information about specific contraceptive methods, including new methods, and new evidence about current methods.
3. Best practices, or lessons learned from program experience-sharing evidence about what works best for reproductive health care planning, organization, and management in a variety of practical areas, for example counseling, logistics, or private sector approaches.

Throughout its history, and looking ahead, the Population Reports objective is to provide the information that readers need and can use to form their own opinions, to train others, and to strengthen programs and policies, rather than to advocate a specific point of view. As befits its home as part of a major School of Public Health, the publication aims above all to be factual, unbiased, authoritative, and fair. That many readers say they rely on the publication and trust its findings is a source of gratification and suggests that the approach has been the appropriate one. Nonetheless, especially as information technologies continue to advance, we at Population Reports hope that the flow of information can increasingly be in all directions, from those who have it to those who need it, and that we can all learn from one another.

Bryant Robey
Editor, Population Reports
July 2003.

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