Intimate partner violence
(IPV) is a well-recognized public health problem. IPV affects women's physical
and mental health through direct pathways, such as injury, and indirect
pathways, such as a prolonged stress response that leads to chronic health problems.
The influence of abuse can persist long after the violence has stopped and
women of color are disproportionately impacted.
Successfully addressing the complex issue of IPV requires multiple prevention efforts that target specific risk and protective factors across individual, interpersonal, institutional, community, and societal levels. This paper includes examples of community-based, state led and federally funded public health programs focused on IPV along this continuum.
Two community-based efforts to increase access to mental health care for low income, women of color who had experienced IPV, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, and a telehealth intervention are discussed. Core tenets of a patient-centered comprehensive approach to assessment and responses and strategies for supporting a statewide comprehensive response are described in Project Connect: A Coordinated Public Health Initiative to Prevent Violence Against Women. Project Connect provides technical assistance to grantees funded through the Violence Against Women Act's health title and involves developing, implementing, and evaluating new ways to identify, respond to, and prevent domestic and sexual violence and promote an improved public health response to abuse in states and Native health programs. Health care partnerships with domestic violence experts are critical in order to provide training, develop referral protocols, and to link IPV victims to advocacy services.
Survivors need a comprehensive response that addresses their safety concerns and may require advocacy around housing or shelter, legal assistance, and safety planning. Gaps in research knowledge identified are health system readiness to respond to IPV victims in health care settings and partner with domestic violence programs, effects of early IPV intervention, and models for taking interventions to scale.
Successfully addressing the complex issue of IPV requires multiple prevention efforts that target specific risk and protective factors across individual, interpersonal, institutional, community, and societal levels. This paper includes examples of community-based, state led and federally funded public health programs focused on IPV along this continuum.
Two community-based efforts to increase access to mental health care for low income, women of color who had experienced IPV, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, and a telehealth intervention are discussed. Core tenets of a patient-centered comprehensive approach to assessment and responses and strategies for supporting a statewide comprehensive response are described in Project Connect: A Coordinated Public Health Initiative to Prevent Violence Against Women. Project Connect provides technical assistance to grantees funded through the Violence Against Women Act's health title and involves developing, implementing, and evaluating new ways to identify, respond to, and prevent domestic and sexual violence and promote an improved public health response to abuse in states and Native health programs. Health care partnerships with domestic violence experts are critical in order to provide training, develop referral protocols, and to link IPV victims to advocacy services.
Survivors need a comprehensive response that addresses their safety concerns and may require advocacy around housing or shelter, legal assistance, and safety planning. Gaps in research knowledge identified are health system readiness to respond to IPV victims in health care settings and partner with domestic violence programs, effects of early IPV intervention, and models for taking interventions to scale.
If
this [domestic violence] were an infectious disease, we would have a treatment
center in every neighborhood. There is a huge disconnect between the prevalence
of domestic violence and what is done in the health system.1
Research indicates that
clinic-based assessment for partner violence can be a step in recognizing
abusive behaviors15,16 and
that assessment and response can improve health and safety. New findings in
reproductive health17 and
in Project Connect sites, demonstrate that the following approaches are
instrumental to a successful IPV assessment and response:
- Combining a discussion of abuse and how it impacts health with other patient or provider administered assessment tools,
- Discussing abuse as it relates to the reason for the visit is meaningful to the patient and logical for the provider,
- Utilizing a brochure for patients and providers to guide the conversation is an effective and valued tool,
- Universal education for all patients and assessment promotes prevention and intervention within each clinical encounter, and
- Supportive referrals to victim services providers matter.
Full article at: http://goo.gl/gfpflL
By: Dutton MA1, James L, Langhorne A, Kelley M.
1 Georgetown University Medical Center (https://gumc.georgetown.edu/), Washington, DC.
J Womens Health (Larchmt). 2015 Jan;24(1):80-5. doi:
10.1089/jwh.2014.4884. Epub 2014 Dec 30.
More at: https://twitter.com/hiv
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