91ÊÓƵ

91ÊÓƵ the Event

Population and Health around the World: A Demographer’s Journey

Join us for an educational evening with Distinguished Professor Jane Menken, who willÌýfocus on interventions intended to improve health and wellbeing and evaluations of their impacts – intended and unintended. She will spotlight two projects of hers:

• Long-term impacts (35 years) of a maternal and child health and family planning program in a rural area of Bangladesh; and
• The impacts of expanded access to the full range of contraceptives in Colorado on female high school graduation.

She will also touch on two additional ongoing projects:

• Effects of a post-apartheid pension plan that no longer was racially based in an area of South Africa with high HIV prevalence; and
• Consequences of decentralization of health services in rural Honduras on maternal and child health.

91ÊÓƵ the Speaker

Jane Menken is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Research Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and former Director (2001-2015) of its Institute of Behavioral Science. Much of her work concerns fertility; she has developed mathematical models of reproduction and carried out studies of the increase in sterility as women age, fertility determinants in Bangladesh, and teenage pregnancy and childbearing in the United States. More recent research emphasizes population policy, child mortality in developing countries, and demographic change in South Asia. Her current work is on evaluation of health and family planning programs as determinants of health and education, effects of early life conditions on adult health, particularly of women, social impact of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, and impact of Honduran decentralization of health services on population health. She is the author of over 100 publications and author or editor of six books.Ìý

Menken was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (1989), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1990), and the National Academy of Medicine (1995), and as 1985 President of the Population Association of America. She was honored as the 2009 Laureate of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.

Educated at the University of Pennsylvania (B.A. in Mathematics, 1960), Harvard School of Public Health (M.S. in Biostatistics, 1962), and Princeton University (Ph.D., Sociology and Demography, 1975), she held various positions at Princeton University in the Office of Population Research (1975-1987), including Assistant Director (1978-86) and Associate Director (1986-87), and as Professor of Sociology (1980-82) and Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs (1982-87). She became a faculty member at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1997. Ìý

She is deeply committed to research capacity building in the developing world. She served as Chair of the African Population and Health Research Center (Nairobi, Kenya) Board of Directors, and a member of theÌýSouthern African Journal of DemographyÌýEditorial Board. She chaired the Steering Committee of the Mellon HIV/AIDS Program at the University of KwaZuluNatal, (Durban, South Africa) and the Scientific Advisory Committee of the INDEPTH Network (2002-2007). In recognition of her work with the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) on collaborative research on HIV/AIDS and in developing their Population Studies Program, WITS awarded her an Honorary Professorship. The CU African Population Studies Research and Training Program, which is directed by Menken, has been supported through grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the NIH Fogarty International Center and the National Institute on Aging. Ìý

91ÊÓƵ the Series

The 91ÊÓƵ Retired Faculty Association (UCBRFA) presents the distinguished professors of the University of Colorado, aÌýlecture and presentation series featuring some of our finest professors andÌýtheir extraordinary research and scholarly work.