Doctor Di Cooper, Director of the Women's Health Research Unit in the School of Public Health, is one of six fellows to be awarded a Soros Reproductive Health and Rights Fellowship for 2005.

Having competed against 70 applicants from around the world, Cooper will be required to contribute a chapter to a book of essays brought out by the programme, titled Fertility Desires and Intentions, Reproductive Choices and Service Needs of HIV-infected Individuals.

Based in the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, the Soros programme highlights progress achieved and obstacles encountered since the United Nations agreements reached during the 1990s on human rights, population, development and women.

"It seeks to foster creative thinking and provide policy makers with practical strategies to overcome obstacles in meeting these goals," said Cooper.

"In addition, the fellowship's goal is to bring together American and international scholars and scholar activists from a variety of disciplines to stimulate and enrich each others thinking and work. We hope to produce materials that will serve as intellectual resources for policy makers, activists, academics and students."