8th National Conference of the Philippine Population Association

OPSF hosts national population confab

The USC Office of Population Studies Foundation successfully hosted today the 8th National Conference of the Philippine Population Association held at Casino Español de Cebu. Over a hundred teachers, social scientists, government officials and population experts attended the meeting which tackled issues that bear on the Life Course Perspective on Population, Nutrition and Health.

Rep. Nerissa Soon Ruiz, chair of the special committee on the country's fulfillment of the Millennium Development Goals and principal author of the Iodized Salt bill, welcomed the delegates to the daylong meet.

From left: Dr. Herrin, Rep. Soon-Ruiz, Dr. Quisumbing, Dr. Gultiano and Dr. Lee.

Eight speakers, led by PPA President and concurrent OPSF director Dr. Socorro Gultiano, presented papers that delved on programs and projects that shed light on the various facets of the relationship between population and nutrition on the health and well-being of Filipinos across the spectrum of the life course (from infancy to old age).

The other speakers were Dr. Linda Adair, research fellow at the Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill; Dr. Corazon VC. Barba, professor emeritus of the Institute of Human Nutrition and Food, U.P. Los Baños; Dr. Agnes R. Quisumbing, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, D.C.; Nanette Lee, senior research associate at OPSF currently on study leave at UNC; Dr. Grace T. Cruz, director of the U.P. Population Institute (UPPI); and Dr. Josefina N. Natividad, professor at UPPI.

Dr. Alejandro N. Herrin, former professor at the U.P. School of Economics provided a comprehensive synthesis of the papers that were read. Dr. Romeo Lee, associate professor at the Behavioral Sciences Department of De La Salle University presided over the conference.

The officers and staff of OPSF with the speakers of the forum as well as the conference.

The daylong conference was preceded yesterday by a Forum on Research Updates also held at the same venue. The forum provided some 100 participants with an insight on current trends in statistics, anthropometrics, focus group discussion and other research methodologies relevant to population and nutrition studies. Among the resource persons wer Dr. Erlinda Burton of the Research Institue for Mindanao Cultures, Xavier University and Dr. Judith Borja, research associate at Carolina Population Center, UNC and a research affiliate at OPSF.

The conference and the forum were sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology, RLim Foundation, OPSF and the University of San Carlos.

Author: J.E. Bersales
28 / July / 2007