Model Development
Policy models are designed to answer a number of “what if” questions relevant to organizations ranging from small local providers of primary healthcare to large international development assistance agencies. Futures Group has developed a series of computer models that analyze available data to determine the future consequences of today’s development programs and policies.
Spectrum is a suite of health policy models using easily-learned Windows-based commands. The models project the need for services in family planning and reproductive health, maternal health, and HIV/AIDS. The Spectrum suite consolidates previous models into an integrated package containing the following components:
- DemProj: Demography. DemProj projects the population for an entire country or region by age and sex based on assumptions about fertility, mortality, and migration. A full set of demographic indicators can be displayed for up to 50 years into the future.
- FamPlan: Family Planning. FamPlan projects family planning requirements to reach national goals, for example addressing unmet need or achieving desired fertility rates.
- AIM: AIDS Impact Model. AIM projects the consequences of the HIV epidemic, including the number of people living with HIV, new infections, and AIDS deaths by age and sex; as well as new cases of tuberculosis and numbers of children orphaned by AIDS.
- RAPID: Resources for the Awareness of Population Impacts on Development. RAPID projects the social and economic consequences of high fertility and population growth for the labor, education, health, urbanization, environment, and agriculture sectors.
- PMTCT: Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission. PMTCT evaluates the costs and benefits of programs to reduce transmission of HIV from mothers to children.
- BenCost: Financial Benefits and Costs of Family Planning Programs. The model compares the monetary costs of family planning programs to the monetary benefits in terms of the reduced levels of social services required at lower levels of fertility.
- CR: Condom Requirements. This model forecasts national condom requirements for both family planning and HIV prevention, focusing on the most-at-risk groups.
- Safe Motherhood Model. This model improves understanding of how changes in maternal health intervention priorities—investments in one strategy over another—affect program outcomes, by estimating the impacts of different scenarios on the maternal mortality ratio.
- Allocate. This model examines the linkages and interactions among three main areas of a reproductive health action plan—family planning, safe motherhood, and post-abortion care—to highlight how investments in one area impact key indicators in the other areas.
- HIV Vaccine. This model explores the impact of potential HIV vaccines on the epidemic.
- Goals. This model helps countries respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic by showing how the amount and allocation of funding relates to the achievement of national goals, such as reduced HIV rates.
The Resource Needs Model calculates the funding required for an expanded national response to HIV/AIDS. It contains three sub-models for prevention, care and treatment, and orphan support.
The Workplace Policy Builder helps companies develop their own HIV/AIDS policies through a participatory process.