Ruth Simmons
Biographic Data
| ID | 3880796 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ruth Simmons |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ruth |
| FAMILY NAME | Simmons |
| SIGNATURE | SIMMONS R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Michigan |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8156-0146 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 178 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Understanding hepatitis C virus reinfections in England in the context of eliminating viral hepatitis as a public health concern
HCV reinfection appeared to decrease over the study period, but people were most at risk in the year post-treatment, which remained constant over time. Harm reduction services should be accessible to people who inject drugs and people who have been in prison, particularly soon after treatment
Has the HCV cascade of care changed among people who inject drugs in England since the introduction of direct-acting antivirals
COC stages from seeing a specialist onwards improved after DAAs became widely available. Further improvements in HCV testing are needed to eliminate HCV in England
Evaluating the effect of direct-acting antiviral agent treatment scale-up on Hepatitis C virus prevalence among people who inject drugs in UK
Real-world evidence showing substantial reductions in chronic HCV associated with increase of HCV treatment scale-up in the community thus supporting the effectiveness of HCV treatment as prevention in people who inject drugs
Results from a retrospective case finding and re-engagement exercise for people previously diagnosed with hepatitis C virus to increase uptake of directly acting antiviral treatment
A substantial number of those included had treatment recorded after the exercise commenced, however, many more remain unengaged. Evaluation of the exercise highlighted areas that could be streamlined to improve future exercises
Symptom Profiles of Children and Young People 12 Months after Sars-CoV-2 Testing
Following the pandemic, many young people, particularly those that have had multiple SARS-CoV-2 positive tests, experience a range of symptoms that warrant consideration and potential investigation and intervention
Effectiveness of Covid-19 Vaccines against the B.1.617.2 (Delta) Variant
Background The B.1.617.2 (delta) variant of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), has contributed to a surge in cases in India and has now been detected across the globe, including a notable increase in cases in the United Kingdom. The effectiveness of the BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccines against this variant has been unclear. Methods We used a test-negati…
What do primary care staff know and do about blood borne virus testing and care for migrant patients? A national survey
BBV testing for migrant patients in primary care is usually ad hoc, which is likely to lead to testing opportunities being missed. Knowledge of migrants' entitlements to healthcare varies and could affect access to care. Interventions to improve professional awareness and identification of migrant patients requiring BBV testing are needed to reduce the undiagnosed and untreated burden of BBVs in this vulnerable population
Mapping the hepatitis C cascade of care in people attending drug treatment services in England
Relating HIV testing patterns in Poland to risky and protective behaviour
The aim of the study was to understand HIV testing patterns needed to improve access to early HIV diagnosis, and to investigate the spread of the virus in different populations. We examined prior testing history of individuals presenting for an HIV test across all 30 voluntary testing and counselling sites in Poland, 2008-2010 to determine factors associated with the testing rate using zero-truncated Poisson regression. Of 2397 persons presenting…
From Project to Program
This paper describes how the Urban Reproductive Health Initiative in Kenya, the Tupange Project (2010-2015), successfully applied the ExpandNet approach to sustainably scale up family planning interventions, first in Machakos and Kakamega, and subsequently also in its three core cities, Nairobi, Kisumu and Mombasa. This new focus meant shifting from a "project" to a "program" approach, which required paying attention to government leadership and …
Beginning with sustainable scale up in mind
Small-scale pilot projects have demonstrated that integrated population, health and environment approaches can address the needs and rights of vulnerable communities. However, these and other types of health and development projects have rarely gone on to influence larger policy and programme development. ExpandNet, a network of health professionals working on scaling up, argues this is because projects are often not designed with future sustaina…
High Percentage of Recent HIV Infection Leading to Onward Transmission in Odessa, Ukraine Associated with Young Adults
Helping Public Sector Health Systems Innovate
Public sector health systems that provide services to poor and marginalized populations in developing countries face great challenges. Change associated with health sector reform and structural adjustment often leaves these already-strained institutions with fewer resources and insufficient capacity to relieve health burdens. The Strategic Approach to Strengthening Reproductive Health Policies and Programs is a methodological innovation developed…
Facilitating Large‐scale Transitions to Quality of Care
In the field of reproductive health, investigation of the transfer of knowledge gained from demonstration and pilot projects to large public‐sector programs typically has not been considered a relevant domain for research or other investigation. This article draws on a range of research in the social sciences and presents two frameworks for understanding the critical attributes of successful expansion of small‐scale innovations. Seven key lessons…
Organizing a Public‐sector Vasectomy Program in Brazil
Although models of high‐quality family planning services for men exist in Latin America, few if any have been organized within the complex and resource‐constrained national public health systems. This study provides evidence from the Santa Barbara project in southern Brazil showing how vasectomy was introduced into the municipal health system. It demonstrates that once the necessary operational and quality‐of‐care improvements were in place, and …
Expanding Contraceptive Choice
This article presents findings from a participatory action research project in a municipality in southern Brazil that models a new and holistic approach to broadening women's contraceptive choices. The project encourages a collaborative process between researchers, community members, and public health managers to diagnose service‐delivery problems, to design and implement interventions, and to evaluate their effectiveness. Findings from the basel…
Women's Fears and Men's Anxieties
The Navrongo experiment, a family planning and health project in northern Ghana, has demonstrated that an appropriately designed, community‐based family planning program can produce a change in contraceptive practice that had been considered unattainable in such a setting. Simultaneously, however, evidence suggests that newly introduced family planning services and contraceptive availability can activate tension in gender relations. In this socie…
The Strategic Approach to Contraceptive Introduction
The introduction of new contraceptive technologies has great potential for expanding contraceptive choice, but in practice, benefits have not always materialized as new methods have been added to public-sector programs. In response to lessons from the past, the UNDP/UNFPA/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development, and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP) has taken major steps to develop a new approach and to support gover…
Women's Lives in Transition
The fertility decline that began in Bangladesh in the late 1980s and continues has prompted diverse theories to explain it. In this qualitative analysis of 21 focus-group sessions with rural women ranging in age from the teens to late 40s and living in the villages of the Matlab area, the women's perceptions of their changing society and of the influence of the family planning program are examined. The women's statements reveal their awareness of…
Diffusion of the Culture of Contraception
This article describes a process of diffusion of family planning information, ideas, and technology among an unanticipated audience of young, unmarried women in rural Bangladesh. The data are derived from a focus-group study conducted in 1987-88 in the Maternal Child Health and Family Planning Project in Matlab, Bangladesh. A discussion with a staff member revealed her vivid memory of the arrival of the community-based family planning worker in h…
The Study of Client-Provider Interactions
Constraints on supply and demand for family planning
Worker-Client Exchanges and Contraceptive Use in Rural Bangladesh
In this article, longitudinal data from rural Bangladesh are used to assess the impact of household visits from family planning workers on contraceptive use. A panel of women was interviewed in a demographic survey and reinterviewed every 90 days for six successive rounds. Regression methods are used to estimate the effect of these encounters on the odds that a woman will use contraceptives. Statistical controls adjust for the potentially confoun…
Employment in Family Planning and Women's Status in Bangladesh
This study investigates how employment in family planning affects the status of community workers. The focus is on three critical variables: prestige, professional status, and social influence. The data are derived from a focus-group study conducted in 1987-88 in the Maternal and Child Health and Family Planning Project in Matlab, Bangladesh. Focus-group sessions were held with community workers, their husbands, community leaders, and community w…
Maternal-Child Health and Family Planning
This article presents a microanalysis of interactions between female fieldworkers and women in rural Bangladesh, and a discussion of the broader organizational constraints that hamper service delivery. It is argued that the fieldworker, herself a rural woman, is faced with considerable demand for both maternal-child health (MCH) and reproductive health care services, but that operational constraints prevent her from realizing her potential in bot…
Women's Fears and Men's Anxieties
The Navrongo experiment, a family planning and health project in northern Ghana, has demonstrated that an appropriately designed, community‐based family planning program can produce a change in contraceptive practice that had been considered unattainable in such a setting. Simultaneously, however, evidence suggests that newly introduced family planning services and contraceptive availability can activate tension in gender relations. In this socie…
Determinants of Reproductive Change in a Traditional Society
A decade has elapsed since a project was launched in Matlab, Bangladesh to test the hypothesis that contraceptive services can induce and sustain fertility decline in a rural traditional population. The demographic impact of this project has been pronounced, lending support to the view that supply-side policies can succeed even where institutional supports for demand are weak. This paper reviews the relationship between the Bangladesh climate of …
Women's Lives in Transition
The fertility decline that began in Bangladesh in the late 1980s and continues has prompted diverse theories to explain it. In this qualitative analysis of 21 focus-group sessions with rural women ranging in age from the teens to late 40s and living in the villages of the Matlab area, the women's perceptions of their changing society and of the influence of the family planning program are examined. The women's statements reveal their awareness of…
The Strategic Approach to Contraceptive Introduction
The introduction of new contraceptive technologies has great potential for expanding contraceptive choice, but in practice, benefits have not always materialized as new methods have been added to public-sector programs. In response to lessons from the past, the UNDP/UNFPA/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development, and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP) has taken major steps to develop a new approach and to support gover…
Beyond Supply
Using participant observation data on worker-client exchanges from Bangladesh, this article examines the interface between a government family planning program and the rural women it serves. Case material focuses first on the program function typically identified in the literature: meeting unmet demand for contraception by providing convenient supply. Functions that have been less recognized are then illustrated: (1) the worker's role in reducing…
Trends in Family Size Preferences and Contraceptive Use in Matlab, Bangladesh
In the nearly ten years of its existence, the Matlab Family Planning and Health Services Project has been characterized by a remarkable rise in contraceptive use and a corresponding decline in fertility. This study examines available evidence on trends in family size preferences in the Matlab area from 1977 to 1984 and their relationship to contraceptive use. Within the Matlab treatment area, the most significant factor behind the increase in con…
Integrating Health Services into an MCH-FP Program
Since 1977 the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, has conducted a field experiment in family planning and MCH in its Matlab research station. The project began with an emphasis on family planning and MCH services were added in stages. This paper uses time series regression methods to address the question of whether the addition of health services contributed to family planning efficacy in Matlab in a program launche…
Employment in Family Planning and Women's Status in Bangladesh
This study investigates how employment in family planning affects the status of community workers. The focus is on three critical variables: prestige, professional status, and social influence. The data are derived from a focus-group study conducted in 1987-88 in the Maternal and Child Health and Family Planning Project in Matlab, Bangladesh. Focus-group sessions were held with community workers, their husbands, community leaders, and community w…
Diffusion of the Culture of Contraception
This article describes a process of diffusion of family planning information, ideas, and technology among an unanticipated audience of young, unmarried women in rural Bangladesh. The data are derived from a focus-group study conducted in 1987-88 in the Maternal Child Health and Family Planning Project in Matlab, Bangladesh. A discussion with a staff member revealed her vivid memory of the arrival of the community-based family planning worker in h…
Transferring Health and Family Planning Service Innovations to the Public Sector
The International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, has launched a field experiment in two rural thanas of Bangladesh to test the transferability of its successful health and family planning experiment in Matlab to the Ministry of Health and Population Control service system. This paper reviews the Matlab experiment with particular attention to its organization and identifies elements for transfer. The intervention strategy and …
Beginning with sustainable scale up in mind
Small-scale pilot projects have demonstrated that integrated population, health and environment approaches can address the needs and rights of vulnerable communities. However, these and other types of health and development projects have rarely gone on to influence larger policy and programme development. ExpandNet, a network of health professionals working on scaling up, argues this is because projects are often not designed with future sustaina…
Expanding Contraceptive Choice
This article presents findings from a participatory action research project in a municipality in southern Brazil that models a new and holistic approach to broadening women's contraceptive choices. The project encourages a collaborative process between researchers, community members, and public health managers to diagnose service‐delivery problems, to design and implement interventions, and to evaluate their effectiveness. Findings from the basel…
Worker-Client Exchanges and Contraceptive Use in Rural Bangladesh
In this article, longitudinal data from rural Bangladesh are used to assess the impact of household visits from family planning workers on contraceptive use. A panel of women was interviewed in a demographic survey and reinterviewed every 90 days for six successive rounds. Regression methods are used to estimate the effect of these encounters on the odds that a woman will use contraceptives. Statistical controls adjust for the potentially confoun…
From Project to Program
This paper describes how the Urban Reproductive Health Initiative in Kenya, the Tupange Project (2010-2015), successfully applied the ExpandNet approach to sustainably scale up family planning interventions, first in Machakos and Kakamega, and subsequently also in its three core cities, Nairobi, Kisumu and Mombasa. This new focus meant shifting from a "project" to a "program" approach, which required paying attention to government leadership and …
Facilitating Large‐scale Transitions to Quality of Care
In the field of reproductive health, investigation of the transfer of knowledge gained from demonstration and pilot projects to large public‐sector programs typically has not been considered a relevant domain for research or other investigation. This article draws on a range of research in the social sciences and presents two frameworks for understanding the critical attributes of successful expansion of small‐scale innovations. Seven key lessons…
Strengthening Government Health and Family Planning Programs
An ongoing study at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) is based on the premise that public sector health and family planning programs can be improved through an assessment of the dysfunctional aspects of their operations, the development of problem-solving capabilities, and the transfer of strategies successfully tested in a small-scale pilot project. This paper reports findings from a field trial imple…
On the Institutional Analysis of Population Programs
Population programs have remained the stepchildren of the contemporary social science literature on population. They have weathered great hopes, disillusionments, and controversy. Their successes and failures in affecting fertility have received widespread attention. Yet the programs themselves, and their institutional realities, have not been given the sustained and rigorous consideration they deserve. Population programs can influence demograph…
Helping Public Sector Health Systems Innovate
Public sector health systems that provide services to poor and marginalized populations in developing countries face great challenges. Change associated with health sector reform and structural adjustment often leaves these already-strained institutions with fewer resources and insufficient capacity to relieve health burdens. The Strategic Approach to Strengthening Reproductive Health Policies and Programs is a methodological innovation developed…
Integrating Health Services into an MCH-FP Program in Matlab, Bangladesh
This is a follow-up to a 1984 study that analyzed the relationship between areal variation in the contraceptive prevalence time series and in the intensity of maternal and child health (MCH) services of the Matlab Family Planning Health Services Project. Results based on 69 months of observation suggested that the addition of MCH components to a program with basic MCH and comprehensive family planning services had no incremental impact on family …
Organizing for Government Intervention in Family Planning
Family planning programs have encountered limited success not only because of our incomplete understanding of the sociocultural context of fertility decisions, but because the bureaucratic structures entrusted with the organizing task are overextended. Since the implementing agencies are themselves a complex part of the wider society in which they operate, there are important advantages to using an open systems perspective in the analysis of the …
Organizing a Public‐sector Vasectomy Program in Brazil
Although models of high‐quality family planning services for men exist in Latin America, few if any have been organized within the complex and resource‐constrained national public health systems. This study provides evidence from the Santa Barbara project in southern Brazil showing how vasectomy was introduced into the municipal health system. It demonstrates that once the necessary operational and quality‐of‐care improvements were in place, and …
Implementing Family Planning in a Ministry of Health
Ruth S. Simmons, Ali Ashraf, Implementing Family Planning in a Ministry of Health: Organizational Barriers at the State and District Levels, Studies in Family Planning, Vol. 9, No. 2/3 (Feb. - Mar., 1978), pp. 22-34
La pertinence de la poésie de David Diop pour les jeunes Noirs aux États-Unis
Untouchable
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La pertinence de la poésie de David Diop pour les jeunes Noirs aux États-Unis
Organizing for Government Intervention in Family Planning
Family planning programs have encountered limited success not only because of our incomplete understanding of the sociocultural context of fertility decisions, but because the bureaucratic structures entrusted with the organizing task are overextended. Since the implementing agencies are themselves a complex part of the wider society in which they operate, there are important advantages to using an open systems perspective in the analysis of the …
The Dilemma of Family Planning in a North Indian State
An empirical study of the family planning program and its clients in the rural areas of Allahabad Division of Uttar Pradesh in India was undertaken in 1971-1972. While family planning acceptance in this region is low, interviews with villagers and family planning staff suggest that organizational shortcomings of the program may help to explain the low level of acceptance. The reported level of contact between the program field staff and the villa…
Implementing Family Planning in a Ministry of Health
Ruth S. Simmons, Ali Ashraf, Implementing Family Planning in a Ministry of Health: Organizational Barriers at the State and District Levels, Studies in Family Planning, Vol. 9, No. 2/3 (Feb. - Mar., 1978), pp. 22-34
On the Institutional Analysis of Population Programs
Population programs have remained the stepchildren of the contemporary social science literature on population. They have weathered great hopes, disillusionments, and controversy. Their successes and failures in affecting fertility have received widespread attention. Yet the programs themselves, and their institutional realities, have not been given the sustained and rigorous consideration they deserve. Population programs can influence demograph…
Strengthening Government Health and Family Planning Programs
An ongoing study at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) is based on the premise that public sector health and family planning programs can be improved through an assessment of the dysfunctional aspects of their operations, the development of problem-solving capabilities, and the transfer of strategies successfully tested in a small-scale pilot project. This paper reports findings from a field trial imple…
Integrating Health Services into an MCH-FP Program
Since 1977 the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, has conducted a field experiment in family planning and MCH in its Matlab research station. The project began with an emphasis on family planning and MCH services were added in stages. This paper uses time series regression methods to address the question of whether the addition of health services contributed to family planning efficacy in Matlab in a program launche…
Transferring Health and Family Planning Service Innovations to the Public Sector
The International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, has launched a field experiment in two rural thanas of Bangladesh to test the transferability of its successful health and family planning experiment in Matlab to the Ministry of Health and Population Control service system. This paper reviews the Matlab experiment with particular attention to its organization and identifies elements for transfer. The intervention strategy and …
Client Relations in South Asia
Client relations constitute a neglected area of research in family planning. Findings from studies in northern India and Bangladesh reveal considerable variation in both the quantity and quality of contacts in programs that function under roughly comparable socioeconomic conditions. Client relations are determined by a complex set of forces in which both programmatic factors and conditions pertaining to the societal environment play a key role. W…
Integrating Health Services into an MCH-FP Program in Matlab, Bangladesh
This is a follow-up to a 1984 study that analyzed the relationship between areal variation in the contraceptive prevalence time series and in the intensity of maternal and child health (MCH) services of the Matlab Family Planning Health Services Project. Results based on 69 months of observation suggested that the addition of MCH components to a program with basic MCH and comprehensive family planning services had no incremental impact on family …
Trends in Family Size Preferences and Contraceptive Use in Matlab, Bangladesh
In the nearly ten years of its existence, the Matlab Family Planning and Health Services Project has been characterized by a remarkable rise in contraceptive use and a corresponding decline in fertility. This study examines available evidence on trends in family size preferences in the Matlab area from 1977 to 1984 and their relationship to contraceptive use. Within the Matlab treatment area, the most significant factor behind the increase in con…
Beyond Supply
Using participant observation data on worker-client exchanges from Bangladesh, this article examines the interface between a government family planning program and the rural women it serves. Case material focuses first on the program function typically identified in the literature: meeting unmet demand for contraception by providing convenient supply. Functions that have been less recognized are then illustrated: (1) the worker's role in reducing…
Determinants of Reproductive Change in a Traditional Society
A decade has elapsed since a project was launched in Matlab, Bangladesh to test the hypothesis that contraceptive services can induce and sustain fertility decline in a rural traditional population. The demographic impact of this project has been pronounced, lending support to the view that supply-side policies can succeed even where institutional supports for demand are weak. This paper reviews the relationship between the Bangladesh climate of …
Maternal-Child Health and Family Planning
This article presents a microanalysis of interactions between female fieldworkers and women in rural Bangladesh, and a discussion of the broader organizational constraints that hamper service delivery. It is argued that the fieldworker, herself a rural woman, is faced with considerable demand for both maternal-child health (MCH) and reproductive health care services, but that operational constraints prevent her from realizing her potential in bot…
Employment in Family Planning and Women's Status in Bangladesh
This study investigates how employment in family planning affects the status of community workers. The focus is on three critical variables: prestige, professional status, and social influence. The data are derived from a focus-group study conducted in 1987-88 in the Maternal and Child Health and Family Planning Project in Matlab, Bangladesh. Focus-group sessions were held with community workers, their husbands, community leaders, and community w…
Worker-Client Exchanges and Contraceptive Use in Rural Bangladesh
In this article, longitudinal data from rural Bangladesh are used to assess the impact of household visits from family planning workers on contraceptive use. A panel of women was interviewed in a demographic survey and reinterviewed every 90 days for six successive rounds. Regression methods are used to estimate the effect of these encounters on the odds that a woman will use contraceptives. Statistical controls adjust for the potentially confoun…
The Study of Client-Provider Interactions
Constraints on supply and demand for family planning
Diffusion of the Culture of Contraception
This article describes a process of diffusion of family planning information, ideas, and technology among an unanticipated audience of young, unmarried women in rural Bangladesh. The data are derived from a focus-group study conducted in 1987-88 in the Maternal Child Health and Family Planning Project in Matlab, Bangladesh. A discussion with a staff member revealed her vivid memory of the arrival of the community-based family planning worker in h…
Women's Lives in Transition
The fertility decline that began in Bangladesh in the late 1980s and continues has prompted diverse theories to explain it. In this qualitative analysis of 21 focus-group sessions with rural women ranging in age from the teens to late 40s and living in the villages of the Matlab area, the women's perceptions of their changing society and of the influence of the family planning program are examined. The women's statements reveal their awareness of…
The Strategic Approach to Contraceptive Introduction
The introduction of new contraceptive technologies has great potential for expanding contraceptive choice, but in practice, benefits have not always materialized as new methods have been added to public-sector programs. In response to lessons from the past, the UNDP/UNFPA/WHO/World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development, and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP) has taken major steps to develop a new approach and to support gover…
Expanding Contraceptive Choice
This article presents findings from a participatory action research project in a municipality in southern Brazil that models a new and holistic approach to broadening women's contraceptive choices. The project encourages a collaborative process between researchers, community members, and public health managers to diagnose service‐delivery problems, to design and implement interventions, and to evaluate their effectiveness. Findings from the basel…
Women's Fears and Men's Anxieties
The Navrongo experiment, a family planning and health project in northern Ghana, has demonstrated that an appropriately designed, community‐based family planning program can produce a change in contraceptive practice that had been considered unattainable in such a setting. Simultaneously, however, evidence suggests that newly introduced family planning services and contraceptive availability can activate tension in gender relations. In this socie…
Organizing a Public‐sector Vasectomy Program in Brazil
Although models of high‐quality family planning services for men exist in Latin America, few if any have been organized within the complex and resource‐constrained national public health systems. This study provides evidence from the Santa Barbara project in southern Brazil showing how vasectomy was introduced into the municipal health system. It demonstrates that once the necessary operational and quality‐of‐care improvements were in place, and …
Medicine (27 works) · Population (26 works) · Economic growth (22 works) · Environmental health (21 works) · Economics (20 works) · Family planning (20 works) · Global Maternal and Child Health (18 works) · Political science (17 works) · Business (15 works) · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare (13 works)