The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
KFF’s policy research provides facts and analysis on a wide range of policy issues and public programs.
KFF designs, conducts and analyzes original public opinion and survey research on Americans’ attitudes, knowledge, and experiences with the health care system to help amplify the public’s voice in major national debates.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the organization’s core operating programs.
This issue brief explains the legal and factual issues in dispute and the reviews the potential implications of different rulings in the case of June Medical Services v. Russo, which could have significant implications for women’s access to abortion and could eliminate the right of abortion providers to bring legal challenges to state and federal laws and policies.
The U.S. government has a long history of supporting efforts to improve the health of women and families around the world. While many U.S. programs address women and family health generally, several are focused on them directly, including: maternal and child health (MCH), which includes immunization activities; family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH); and nutrition. This overview paper presents key findings for accompanying papers examining U.S funding for each of these sectors. They look at funding trends over time, the top country recipients of aid, the share of funding provided to the sector within the larger U.S. global health funding portfolio, and the role of the U.S. as a donor in the context of overall donor support.
The U.S. government has supported international family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) efforts for 50 years and is one of the largest donors to FP/RH in the world. This brief provides an overview of U.S. funding for FP/RH, including trends in bilateral and multilateral funding and top country recipients of U.S. funding, and places the U.S. within the larger context of overall donor support for the sector.
The 2016 Survey of Americans on the U.S. Role in Global Health is the latest in a series of surveys designed, conducted, and analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation in order to shed light on the American public’s perceptions, knowledge, and attitudes about the role of the United States in efforts to improve health for people in developing countries. This most recent survey updates trends on Americans’ perceptions of the most urgent problems facing developing countries, views on U.S. spending on health, and U.S. priorities for women’s health in developing countries. It also explores new questions on Americans’ awareness of the Zika virus outbreak and recent U.S. efforts to combat the outbreak both at home and in developing countries.
In this Medium post, Alina Salganicoff outlines the legal arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court case Zubik v. Burwell and discusses what the case could mean for contraceptive coverage.
In this post on The Huffington Post, Alina Salganicoff and Laurie Sobel offer a Q&A on “contraceptive-only” plans, an approach mentioned during oral arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court case Zubik v. Burwell. In the Zubik case, a group of religiously affiliated nonprofits with religious objections to providing birth control coverage seek an exemption from the Affordable Care Act's provision requiring most plans to offer such coverage without cost-sharing.
US Appeals Court Rulings on Lawsuits by Nonprofits Objecting to Contraception Download Source Sobel and Salganicoff. 2015.
This issue brief dissects the issues raised by the legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that private insurance plans include contraception as part of their coverage of preventive services for women. Over 40 for-profit corporations and over 40 nonprofit corporations have filed lawsuits claiming that the requirement to provide their employees with contraceptives violates their religious rights. On November 26, 2013, the Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases filed by for-profit corporations, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties, that claim that this requirement violates their religious rights. At the crux of these cases is a question that the Supreme Court has not previously addressed: Do for-profit corporations have religious protections under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment? The brief provides background on how the ACA’s contraceptive requirement works, summarizes some of the legal challenges brought by for-profit and non-profit organizations and discusses the implications of potential rulings by the Supreme Court.
This report establishes a baseline level of donor government funding for family planning activities in 2012 that can be used to track total international assistance funding levels for family planning over time as well as commitments donor governments made at last year's London Summit on Family Planning. It finds donor governments provided about US$900 million in bilateral funding for family planning programs in 2012, and an additional US$432 million in core contributions to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
This fact sheet reviews current national and state policies around Emergency Contraception, including methods, patient awareness, access and availability, and insurance coverage. Among methods discussed are ulipristal acetate (ella), intrauterine devices (copper IUDs and levonorgestrel IUDs), and progestin-based pills (Plan B and Next Choice).
© 2026 KFF