Inclusive population register systems for people-centered health and social policies and programs

Legal identity systems and population registers offer a significant opportunity to advance inclusive societies. Many low- and middle-income countries have been modernizing their population register systems as part of broader efforts to advance inclusive digital public infrastructure through which health, social and economic service delivery can be facilitated.

This initiative will support population registers and digitized legal identity systems in research and knowledge translation to better understand issues of rights, ethics and inclusion among international population scientists and decision-makers. The focus is on how digitalization of population registers affects and is affected by sexual and reproductive health and rights and climate change.

The project aims to inform health and social policies advancing women’s empowerment and gender equity and will support female research leaders on population registers, global health, sexual and reproductive health and climate change by mentoring two early-career female fellows (from Uganda and Brazil), leveraging the expertise of two senior female faculty from the Institute on Inequalities in Global Health and a senior expert from the United Nations Population Fund.

It will also convene and disseminate new knowledge about the linkages between the digitization of legal identity systems and the advancement of sexual and reproductive health and rights and climate change. This initiative will also unpack emerging challenges and new opportunities around digitized population registers and climate crisis action. It will develop a strategic research agenda on inclusive population registers and legal identity systems and support research studies on digitization of population registers and implications on climate change.