Karen Hardee

Population Action International

Dr. Karen Hardee joined PAI as Vice
President of Research in 2007 with more than twenty years experience in social
demography. Dr. Hardee has focused on population and development, family
planning and reproductive health, HIV and AIDS, gender integration, and
monitoring and evaluation.

Dr. Hardee provides technical direction on
PAI’s diverse research portfolio, including population and climate change,
reproductive health supplies, the integration of HIV/AIDS and sexual and
reproductive health, financing, and gender and HIV/AIDS.  Dr. Hardee has
led PAI’s research on population, sexual reproductive health and adaptation to
climate change.

Prior to joining PAI, Dr. Hardee was
senior advisor at John Snow, Inc., where her work focused on  building
harmonized tools for global partners to assess and improve the quality of data
reported to measure success in global health initiatives.  Dr. Hardee was
director of Constella Futures’ Center for Research and Evaluation, and director
of research on the POLICY Project.  Dr. Hardee also worked at Family
Health International as a deputy director of the Service Delivery Research
Division and principal research scientist on the Women’s Studies Project and at
USAID and the U.S. Bureau of the Census as a presidential management fellow.

Dr. Hardee holds a Ph.D. from Cornell
University’s Population and Development Program. Dr. Hardee has consulted for
the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Planned Parenthood Federation
(IPPF), and has received funding for research and evaluation projects from
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, UNDP, USAID, CDC, the Gates
Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and the Ford Foundation. Dr. Hardee
holds a B.A. from Duke University in Comparative Area Studies and a PhD in
Development Sociology from Cornell University.

Should We Be Talking About Population and Climate Change?

If we don't stay in the discussion on population and climate change and insist on family planning and reproductive health programs that respect individual rights, what solutions might emerge from people who are unaware about what can happen when population policies and programs are driven purely by demographic targets?