PSI History

PSI was founded in 1970 to demonstrate that social marketing of contraceptives in the private sector could succeed under differing circumstances and on different continents. In the 1970s and 1980s, PSI worked in family planning (hence the name Population Services International) in Bangladesh, Kenya, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. PSI has delivered a cumulative of over 90 million couple years of protection as of December 2006.

In 1987 PSI pioneered condom social marketing for HIV prevention in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), along with a complementary mass media campaign that promoted abstinence, fidelity and correct and consistent condom use. A 1991 evaluation of the Zaire campaign showed that it "increased acceptance and reported practice of abstinence and mutual fidelity" as well as "increased knowledge, acceptance and reported use of condoms."

The successful Zaire project was the springboard for PSI's rapid growth in the 1990s, during which it launched condom social marketing projects in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. Early HIV prevention programs served primarily general populations, although some also focused on specific high risk groups. Since the early 1990s PSI has ramped up its focus on high risk and other priority groups and developed new and more sophisticated strategies to combat HIV.

Although PSI has been marketing oral rehydration salts since 1985, it was only in 1995 that it began launching other maternal and child health products, particularly insecticide-treated mosquito nets for malaria prevention and a safe water system. PSI's first foray into malaria prevention was an experimental insecticide-treated mosquito net project in Central African Republic in 1995. In 2001, only 2%of PSI's health impact came from malaria; in 2006, that rose to 28%.

In the mid-1990s PSI added two more regions — Eastern Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean — and started providing health services as well as products. PSI has long used health communication to promote healthy behaviors that complement products and services.

Perhaps because of its affinity for commercial sector approaches, PSI has developed a focus on measurable health impact that is unique in the nonprofit world. Every month, PSI calculates and reviews the health impact and cost of its activities, using models and formulae developed by leading experts. PSI managers believe that measurement imposes a discipline that results in greater health impact and efficiency.

With the addition of new regions and new health products, services and behaviors, PSI has become a truly global health organization offering a wide range of health products and services. You are invited to explore the diversity of PSI's health areas, which are listed in the blue bar at the left.

•  PSI Board of Directors
•  Senior Staff
•  Country Managers
•  Our People
•  PSI's Private Sector Approach
• PSI 2005 Form 990

PSI works to improve the health and quality of life of low-income people around the world, including these Tanzanian children.

PSI's first social marketing programs were launched in South Asia in the early 1970s and focused on family planning. Here, PSI staff explains the benefits of birth spacing at a meeting of medical practitioners in Sri Lanka.