A Demographic Analysis of the Senegalese Population of Reproductive Health Care Organizations

Rachel Sullivan, University of California, Berkeley

The population of organizations in the reproductive health care field in Senegal serves as the analytical focus of this paper. Adapting the standard tools of demographic analysis, I examine the influence of global and national factors, such as health paradigms, population policies, and fertility levels, on the reproductive health care population in Senegal. As part of a larger project that explores the range of African responses to population "problems," the analysis presented in this paper is unique in that it a) tests the application of demographic techniques to a "nontraditional" population, that of reproductive health care organizations, for whom data are sparse, and b) informs on non-governmental organizations, a relatively understudied organizational form. By combining demographic and sociological methods, this paper shows how understanding the macro causes of the Senegalese organizational population's evolution informs on the overall treatment of population issues in Senegal.