I’ve struggled to find the right words following Musk/Trump’s decision to end the Demographic and Health Surveys Program (the OG DHS). While nothing is inevitable, there is no denying this is a huge blow personally, professionally and for the world. /1 dhsprogram.com - ThreadSky

jeffedm.bsky.social • 5 days ago

I’ve struggled to find the right words following Musk/Trump’s decision to end the Demographic and Health Surveys Program (the OG DHS). While nothing is inevitable, there is no denying this is a huge blow personally, professionally and for the world.
/1
https://dhsprogram.com/

Comments

bartbing.bsky.social•5 days ago

I’m so sorry, Jeff. Never forget and never doubt that the work you did there was important, and made the world a better place.

jeffedm.bsky.social•5 days ago

I’m grieving, not just b/c I’ve lost my job and for my colleagues, but what this means for all of us and especially the poorest and most vulnerable. I first came to demography by stumbling over the DHS country reports in my university library and the DHS has been a part of my life ever since.
/2

jeffedm.bsky.social•5 days ago

Others have started to document the enormous effect that the DHS has had on our understanding of the world and how/why people behave, but for us demographers, it is much more than just a collection of datasets and the loss is very personal
/3
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5134325

jeffedm.bsky.social•5 days ago

For 40yrs the DHS produced nationally representative data on a staggeringly wide range of topics based on a standardized, rigorous approach that allowed us to reliably compare countries against each other and over time. DHS data are a foundation for our understanding of population health globally
/4

jeffedm.bsky.social•5 days ago

Countries use DHS data to monitor progress, set goals and identify areas for improvement. NGOs and civil society do the same. Globally, DHS data are core to understanding progress on the SDGs and generally tracking progress (and there has been so much!) across so many areas
/5

jeffedm.bsky.social•5 days ago

While I very often complained about how questions were asked in the DHS or why some topics were not included in as much detail as I’d have liked, the DHS has often (sometimes inadvertently) been a trailblazer on important and sometimes controversial topics
/6

jeffedm.bsky.social•5 days ago

How much would we know about women’s experiences with domestic violence without the DHS? Or child marriage? Or FGM? Or abortion? Or child malnutrition? Or malaria? Or men and women’s decision-making? Or adolescent SRH? Or what might drive these? Or how they’re related to each other?
/7

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