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20 Essential Resources for Population, Health, and Environment (PHE)


Knowledge SUCCESS and PACE Project are pleased to announce a new collection, 20 Essential Resources for Population, Health, and Environment (PHE). The collection addresses several knowledge management challenges among PHE professionals, uncovered earlier this year in a series of regional co-creation workshops.

COVID-19 has amplified the links between health, livelihoods, and conservation, particularly in tourism-dependent, rural communities adjacent to national parks and protected areas. Multisectoral, community-driven approaches like Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) boost resilience to such shocks. They enhance equitable access to health care (including voluntary family planning) and diversify livelihoods in rural and last-mile communities adjacent to areas of high biodiversity. By building capacity to reduce poverty and improve maternal, child, and reproductive health outcomes through partnerships that also lead to biodiversity outcomes, PHE approaches help countries achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in an integrated manner.

The PHE community: what challenges do they face finding and sharing knowledge?

Part of the Knowledge SUCCESS portfolio is to provide knowledge management support to the global PHE community. Earlier this year, Knowledge SUCCESS conducted a series of co-creation workshops among those working in PHE in the United States, East Africa, and Asia. Participants shared challenges they face in accessing PHE information and resources and their preferences for exchanging knowledge and information with fellow PHE stakeholders. They also brainstormed ideas (or, in co-creation terminology, they ideated prototypes) for tools that could strengthen the sharing and exchange of PHE knowledge across a global community.

Across all workshops, participants mentioned difficulties they face locating and using PHE resources. First, when they can’t find PHE resources, this challenge is typically caused by common factors including:

  • General lack of PHE resources available online
  • No central website for information, resources, and tools for PHE
  • Not enough time to visit multiple websites to find necessary resources

Second, once they find resources, there is a perceived gap in quality and validity and a general scarcity of evidence-based programmatic information with clear and strong data. Participants shared several reasons for this gap including:

  • Difficulties in coordination and partnership among integrated programs and sectors to collect evidence and data
  • Short PHE program life cycles which impose time constraints on building the evidence base
  • No peer review process to authenticate information

It’s with a particular challenge – resources being scattered across websites – in mind that Knowledge SUCCESS and PACE are excited to launch a new collection, 20 Essential Resources for Population, Health, and Environment.

Launching today: 20 Essential Resources for Population, Health, and Environment

The new collection of 20 essential PHE resources, curated by Knowledge SUCCESS and PACE Project, is designed to help program planners, designers, and implementers in a variety of sectors (such as environmental conservation, resilience, food security, and economic development) understand and explore elements of PHE programs so that they can incorporate this approach into their work. The collection includes resources on introductory concepts, program design, monitoring and evaluation, and program examples and contributions from World Wildlife Fund, ICF International, Margaret Pyke Trust, PHE Ethiopia Consortium, Blue Ventures, PHE Network Madagascar, Lake Victoria Basin Commission, and many others.

Coming soon: a co-created platform for PHE knowledge sharing

The Knowledge SUCCESS team is developing a website that will provide a space for discussion, connection, and collaboration among PHE stakeholders. Building from the ideas generated in the PHE co-creation workshops, it will include a robust repository for PHE resources with plans to build that collection with documented PHE best practices. Stay tuned for the website launch in the early part of 2021.

Kristen P. Patterson

Program Director - People Health, Planet, PRB

Kristen P. Patterson joined PRB in 2014, where she is the program director of People, Health, Planet. Her role focuses on synthesizing data and research findings for policy audiences, developing and sharing knowledge about holistic programs that address human and planetary health, and creating opportunities to foster dialogue and policy reform around multi-sectoral approaches to sustainable development. Kristen started her career by serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger. Since then, her work has centered on the nexus of community development, public health, and environmental conservation. Kristen worked for the Africa Region of The Nature Conservancy for six years, where she helped launch an integrated reproductive health and conservation project, Tuungane, in western Tanzania that continues today. She worked in Madagascar as a USAID Population-Environment Fellow and has conducted research on farmer-herder conflict resolution in Niger. Kristen has a MS in Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development and a Certificate in African Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Tess E. McLoud

Policy Advisor, PRB

Tess E. McLoud is a Policy Advisor on PRB’s People, Health, Planet team, where she works on advocacy for multisectoral development initiatives that address the linkages between population, health, and the environment. Her work has spanned sectors including reproductive health and the environment, with a focus on country-facing work in Africa and Asia. Among other things, she has worked in community-based development as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand, led an initiative on climate change resilience at UNESCO, and managed reproductive health programs in francophone Africa with Ipas. Tess holds a Bachelor’s in anthropology and French from Dartmouth, and a Master’s in French with a focus in international development from Middlebury.

Elizabeth Tully

Senior Program Officer, Knowledge SUCCESS / Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs

Elizabeth (Liz) Tully is a Senior Program Officer at the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs. She supports knowledge and program management efforts and partnership collaborations, in addition to developing print and digital content, including interactive experiences and animated videos. Her interests include family planning/reproductive health, the integration of population, health, and the environment, and distilling and communicating information in new and exciting formats. Liz holds a B.S. in Family and Consumer Sciences from West Virginia University and has been working in knowledge management for family planning since 2009.