The Health Policy Project ended in 2016. Work continued under Health Policy Plus (HP+) until 2022.
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The Spectrum Policy Modeling System consolidates previous models into an integrated package. In its current design, Spectrum has the following components:
- DemProj: Demography. DemProj projects the population for an entire country or region by age and sex, based on assumptions about fertility, mortality, and migration. A full set of demographic indicators can be displayed for up to 50 years into the future. Urban and rural projections can also be prepared. A companion model, EasyProj, supplies the data needed to make a population projection from the estimates produced by the Population Division of the United Nations.
- FamPlan: Family Planning. FamPlan projects family planning requirements needed to reach national goals for addressing unmet need or achieving desired fertility. It can be used to set realistic goals, to plan for the service expansion required to meet program objectives, and to evaluate alternative methods of achieving goals. The program uses assumptions about the proximate determinants of fertility and the characteristics of the family planning program (method mix, source mix, discontinuation rates) to calculate the cost and the number of users and acceptors of different methods by source.
- AIM: AIDS Impact Model. AIM projects the consequences of the HIV epidemic, including the number of people living with HIV, new infections, and AIDS deaths by age and sex; as well as the new cases of tuberculosis and AIDS orphans. AIM is used by UNAIDS to make the national and regional estimates it releases every two years.
- RAPID: Resources for the Awareness of Population Impacts on Development. RAPID projects the social and economic consequences of high fertility and rapid population growth for such sectors as labor, education, health, urbanization, and agriculture. This program is used to raise policymakers' awareness of the importance of fertility and population growth as factors in social and economic development.
- Goals Model. The Goals Model helps efforts to respond to the HIV epidemic by showing how the amount and allocation of funding is related to the achievement of national goals, such as the reduction of HIV prevalence and expansion of care and support.
- Lives Saved Tool (LiST- Child Survival). A program to project the changes in child survival in accordance with changes in coverage of different child health interventions. more information on LiST can be found here.
- Resource Needs Model.The Resource Needs Model estimates the costs of implementing an HIV/AIDS program, including costs for care and treatment, prevention programs, and policy and program support.
Spectrum is a Windows program. The file to be downloaded is 29 MB in size.The Spectrum 5.x install file is a complete package for installing or updating the Spectrum application on your machine. This install file includes the program application and all necessary data except for the individual demographic country files. This data can be downloaded directly from Spectrum (Internet connection required) when creating projections, or by downloading and installing the optional Country Data Package.
The Country Data Package is an optional download which includes the demographic data for all countries based on WPP 2012. This file is considered optional since Spectrum will prompt the user to download data as needed when creating projections. The Country Data Package is useful should the user like to install all the country data during a single session or if a reliable Internet connection is not available during Spectrum usage. Since the Demographic data does not normally change, installation of data will only need to occur once and will work with subsequent installed versions of Spectrum 5.x. The demographic data was removed from the general Spectrum 5.x install file in order to decrease the size of the install file.
Watch the YouTube tutorial on how to use the Spectrum suite of software models.
An e-learning course for DemProj, Introduction to Population Projections, is available here.
Some of the files in this software package were developed by our predecessor projects, the POLICY Project and the USAID|Health Policy Project, and the links will open files from those project websites.
- AIM Manual (Russian) (PDF)
- AIM: A Computer Program for Making HIV/AIDS Projections and Examining the Demographic and Social Impacts of AIDS (PDF 3,084.2 kb 9/15/2010)
- AIM: Programme informatique pour réaliser des projections sur le VIH/SIDA et examiner ses impacts socio-économiques (PDF)
- AIM: Un Programa de Computación para Hacer Proyecciones del VIH/SIDA y Examinar los Impactos Sociales y Económicos del SIDA (PDF)
- DemProj: A Computer Program for Making Population Projections (PDF 894.5 kb 9/15/2010)
- DemProj: Programme informatique pour les projections démographiques (PDF)
- DemProj: Un Programa Computarizado para Calcular Proyecciones de Población (PDF)
- Demproj Manual (Russian) (PDF)
- FamPlan: A Computer Program for Projecting Family Planning Requirements (PDF 996.3 kb 9/17/2010)
- FamPlan: Programme informatisé pour les projections des besoins en matière de planification familiale (PDF)
- FamPlan: Un Programa Computarizado para Calcular Proyecciones de Requisitos de Planificación Familiar (PDF)
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RAPID: Computer Programs for Examining the Socioeconomic Impacts of Population Growth (PDF 1,617.6 kb 10/13/2010)
- Second File (PDF 655.6 kb kb 10/13/2010) - RAPID: Modelos Computarizados para Analizar las Consecuencias Socio-Económicas del Crecimiento Poblacional (PDF)
- RAPID: Programme Informatisé pour Examiner les Impacts Socio-économiques de l'Accroissement de la Population (PDF)
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Spectrum (v 5.41) (EXE 46,149.0 kb 5/9/2016)
- Second File (ZIP 42,331.0 kb kb 5/9/2016)