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Population Council
The Population Council is an international, nonprofit, non-governmental organization based in New York City. It is an organization with strong roots in eugenics.
It runs its Center for Biomedical Research (CBR) out of Rockefeller University in New York.1)
History
Founding
The Population Council was established in 1952 by John D. Rockefeller III in order to channel his interest in global population growth, family planning, and the health of developing nations.2) Spurred by his experience as a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, which was beginning to work on population from the standpoint of food production, Rockefeller established the Council to address the more controversial fields of human fertility and contraceptive research.
In 1955, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave almost half a million dollars for general support to help the Council establish its footing. It continued to make substantial grants through the 1970s for activities including fellowship programs, family planning studies, and international conferences.
Early activities
In its 1957 Annual Report, the council explains that “the Council is increasingly in a position to contribute to the understanding and so, perhaps, to the solution of problems of world population growth and change.”3) The Ford Foundation and the Markle Foundation both provided substantial grants, the former to be spent over the course of five years and the latter to benefit the Council's medical division. Following an earlier grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Council moved ahead with construction of an enlarged laboratory space at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.
Modern activities
In 2015, the council convened a meeting on quality of care sponsored by the Packard Foundation, and attended by representatives from Abt Associates, Family Planning 2020, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Ibis Reproductive Health, ICF International, Jhpiego, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, MSI Reproductive Choices, O’Hanlon Health Consulting, Population Action International, PSI, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), University of North Carolina, and the World Health Organization.4)
Affiliations
Funding
The Population Council has a history of funding from Bayer, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, KPMG, the Markle Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).5) 6)
Leadership
The Council's first president, Frederick Osborn, was a former head of the American Eugenics Society.7)
Its board of trustees has included representatives from AT&T, the Atomic Energy Commission, Brown University, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Chase Manhattan Bank, Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, General Electric Company, Harvard University, the Milbank Memorial Fund, Mt. Sinai Hospital, the Rockefeller Institute, and Scripps Foundation for Research in Population Problems.