Our Work

For nearly 40 years, Pathfinder has led projects focused on improving adolescents and youth access to sexual and reproductive health services in more than 30 countries, under a wide range of circumstances. Pathfinder’s goal is to ensure young people have access to quality services that are tailored to effectively meet the diverse needs of adolescents and youth across countries and cultural contexts.

AIDS is the leading cause of mortality among women of reproductive age and has devastating impact on the health, livelihood, and survival of women, children, and families. Response to this crisis requires a massive, multi-sectoral, and coordinated global effort to implement state-of-the-art approaches, and advance social justice and human rights. For the past 20 years, Pathfinder has played a major role, contributing on several fronts of the global response to AIDS.

For more than 55 years, improving access to contraception and family planning has been core to Pathfinder’s mission. Pathfinder has worked in more than 100 countries implementing large scale service delivery programs. Our goal is to advance opportunities for women, men, and adolescents to make choices about their sexual and reproductive health through access to contraceptive services and information.

Pathfinder’s advocacy is focused on improving the US and global political environment for sexual and reproductive health programs. Pathfinder is recognized in the United States and globally as a strong and enduring voice for international sexual and reproductive health and rights issues. Our strong reputation in service delivery and our ability to leverage technical knowledge and expertise make Pathfinder a key resource to policymakers around the world.

Pathfinder believes access to abortion services is not only a public health imperative, it is also every woman’s right. As part of our mission, Pathfinder helps ensure the availability of safe, legal abortion services that are performed by well-trained providers so that every woman has options and can make choices about what is best for her wellbeing and future.

Throughout our history, Pathfinder has supported integrated and comprehensive services for maternal and newborn care. We promote contraception, train midwives and skilled birth attendants, and enhance emergency obstetric care with the goal of reducing maternal and newborn morbidity and mortality and ensuring mothers and their newborns have access to help and information at every point during pregnancy and childbirth—from the household to the hospital—and then safely home.