An opinion piece, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and co-authored by researchers from Oxford Population Health, argues that cuts to the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program represent an opportunity to develop a more equitable and sustainable model for health data collection and dissemination.
The DHS Program, which launched in 1984, produced and shared free, high quality population health data on nearly 100 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), informing national and international policies on maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, malaria, nutrition and many other fields. At least 9,000 published studies, reports, and book chapters drew on DHS data, according to an analysis by the authors.
The dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) led to the closure of the programme in 2025. A UN report on the impact of the sudden termination of the DHS said it would ‘create profound data gaps’, hindering the ability of national governments and the international community to monitor health trends, develop evidence-based policies and track progress for the world’s most vulnerable populations.
An emergency three-year grant from the Gates Foundation provided a temporary reprieve that has allowed the sharing of DHS data with researchers to restart and some surveys to resume, but the long-term future of the work remains in severe doubt.
In this article, lead author Dr Jasmin Abdel Ghany, a researcher at the Leverhulme Centre of Demographic Science, and co-authors make the case for stakeholders to use the next three years to develop a new model of data collection, harmonisation, ownership, and distribution that is country-led, cost effective, and centred around the needs of LMICs:
We urge country governments, donors, and other stakeholders and data users to look ahead and strategically intensify investments into lasting high-quality data collection efforts that offer standardization of indicators and data harmonization and are led by institutions
in LMICs.
They recommend a number of steps that would remove US gatekeeping and ensure unrestricted access to data by governments, non-profit researchers, scholars, and students. These include storing data in multiple well-established repositories around the world, encouraging country statistical offices to make DHS data available on their own websites, and the adoption of a standardised data use agreement that can be used across all countries.
The uncertainty induced by the programme’s termination has led to researchers disseminating data without authorisation, underlining the need for a sustainable solution that preserves already collected DHS data as a global public good. The authors conclude
Equity and accessibility must be the central principles that guide how we rebuild DHS data collection and access. Only then can we empower countries to achieve health and development goals.
In the meantime, the authors encourage researchers to expand cross-national research collaborations, share code openly, and make use of alternative population health data sources such as national health, civil registration, and health surveillance systems. Such a shift could offer opportunities to accelerate research on emerging challenges that populations face in the context of climate change, pandemics, and conflict.