Health care for women in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Among the most widely strategies in birth planning has been the designation of a "target population" of women of reproductive age. Maternal and child health programs are designed as if this were a uniform category of women, or a functional category for women themselves. In this paper, Mayra Buvinić, Ph. D. (International Center for Research on Women, Washington, D.C.) and Joanne Leslie, M.S. (School of Hygiene and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University) disaggregate women into more meaningful subcategories that look beyond their reproductive role. What is important about this disaggregation is that it identifies the significant number of women whose health and family planning needs cannot be met by conventionally designed MCH or family planning services. Is it sufficient or wise, the authors ask, to design services in effect for only one group of women--the current childbearers--if these may represent a minority of women in a given period of time? When subpopulations for health and family planning services are defined along social, economic, and cultural lines, in addition to reproductive status, striking challenges to the prevailing design of services for women emerge.