Tools

Spectrum

The Spectrum Policy Modeling System consolidates these 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.
   
• PMTCT: Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission. PMTCT evaluates the costs and benefits of intervention programs to reduce transmission of HIV from mother to child. Three sets of interventions are included in the model: drug treatment (seven possible options); type of delivery (vaginal or Cesarean section); and type of infant feeding (formula, breastfeeding, or mixed). Outputs include a benefit-cost ratio as well as cost-effectiveness measures such as cost per HIV infection averted.
   
• 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.
   
• Safe Motherhood Model. This model estimates the impact of various scores from the Maternal-Neonatal Program Index (MNPI) on a country’s maternal mortality ratio. The MNPI is an index of 81 indicators for national efforts to improve maternal and neonatal health services. The model helps managers to gain a better understanding of the impacts of policies, budgets, and service delivery improvements on maternal health outcomes.
   
• Allocate. Allocate examines the linkages and interactions among three main areas of a representative reproductive health action plan (RHAP): family planning, safe motherhood, and postabortion care. Allocate also shows the interactive impacts of changing decisions about levels of funding.
   
• HIV Vaccine. This model explores the impact of potential HIV vaccines on the epidemic.
   

Spectrum is a Windows program that will run in either Windows 95 or higher versions. The file to be downloaded is 11 MB in size. The installed program requires approximately 38MB of hard disk space.

Software

Revision History

Manuals