Our Impact

PopFam has launched the careers of more than 2,000 global health scientists and leaders—equipping them with critical thinking, field-based experience, and ethical grounding to tackle the world’s toughest public health challenges. 

These leaders form a vibrant, powerful global community of nonprofit pioneers, policymakers, academics, scientists, and health innovators—working on the frontlines to drive change and make lives better for all people everywhere. 

Through the pioneering development of tools to prevent, respond to, and heal childhood trauma, PopFam has trained and galvanized more than 1,000 frontline workers across New York’s child care, education, social service, and health sectors. 

These practitioners are integrating trauma-informed approaches into everyday care—building safer, more responsive systems for children and families affected by adversity and toxic stress. This work has transformed how care is delivered in the State of New York. 

For more than 25 years, PopFam has transformed how the world thinks about and responds to humanitarian crises and forced migration. As one of the world’s first academic programs dedicated to health in emergencies, PopFam has trained 300+ graduates now leading frontline innovation in fragile settings across 70+ countries.  

Our faculty and researchers shaped the SPHERE standards- the globally recognized blueprint for delivering effective, ethical humanitarian aid. From war zones to refugee camps, PopFam’s impact is felt wherever systems break down and lives are at risk. 

PopFam redefined how sexual and reproductive health are delivered in humanitarian emergencies, proving that good quality SRH services– including contraception and abortion - is possible and essential in crisis settings. From 2007-2020, the Reproductive Health Access, Information and Services in Emergencies (RAISE) Initiative and partners reached more than 1.8 million new contraceptive users in over 30 crisis settings—with nearly half opting for long-acting reversible methods, a choice previously unavailable to most women in humanitarian settings.  

PopFam has strengthened emergency care systems in low-resource settings by integrating them with robust primary health care. In Rwanda, PopFam partnered with the Rwanda College of Medicine and Health Sciences and the Ministries of Health to train rural practitioners, develop national tools like the Emergency Medicine Norms and Procedures and the Emergency Medicine Package of Care, and launch a postgraduate course in Emergency and Critical Care Medicine. This work led to emergency medicine being recognized as a standalone specialty—a major milestone in building sustainable, lifesaving health systems. Since its inception in 2013, the program has graduated 28 emergency physician specialists, with 16 current emergency medicine residents in training. 

PopFam reshaped global understanding of maternal health by pioneering the Three Delays Model, showing that preventing maternal deaths requires addressing not just medical gaps, but also the social, economic, and political barriers to care. This thought leadership laid the groundwork for the Averting Maternal Death and Disability (AMDD) program—the first global effort to frame maternal mortality as a human rights issue. Operating across 85 initiatives in 50 countries, AMDD influenced the World Health Organization’s Safe Motherhood Initiative and transformed how global specialists approach maternal health worldwide. 

PopFam’s Averting Maternal Death and Disability (AMDD) Initiative successfully established Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (EmONC) as the global gold standard for frontline maternal care worldwide. Between 1990 and 2015, this approach contributed to a nearly 44% decline in maternal deaths. In 18 countries, AMDD-supported facilities more than doubled the number of treatments of obstetric complications and cut case fatality rates in half, ultimately improving care for 270 million people. 

PopFam’s groundbreaking research on unaccompanied children in emergencies directly led to the first-ever U.S. foreign assistance policy for vulnerable children—the Action Plan for Children in Adversity, launched at the White House in 2012. Designed to highlight the needs of children affected by conflict, disaster, and displacement in low- and middle-income countries, the research also led to recognition of the needs of unaccompanied minors in the draft Convention on the Rights of Child and guidelines which the UN High Commissioner for Refugees issues to field staff,  transforming global child protection standards. 

PopFam’s research on the brain and behavioral health impacts of toxic pesticide exposure  in pregnant women and their children, combined with strategic support to advocacy organizations, has influenced environmental safety regulations in at least nine U.S. states. This state-level action has been especially critical in times when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s authority was stalled by legal challenges, ensuring continued progress on environmental health despite national setbacks. 

Recognizing that young men between the ages of 15-40 disengage with primary care, PopFam launched the Young Men’s Clinic in Washington Heights more than two decades ago -one of the first of its kind in the U.S.  By providing accessible, comprehensive care—including physical exams, sexual and reproductive health services, mental health support, and social work—the Clinic set a new standard for how to reach and serve young men in under-served communities. Today, it stands as a national model for equity-driven, primary care innovation.