Child abuse and neglect and intimate partner violence are prevalent and extremely harmful public health concerns in the United States. Their complex etiology and impacts on individuals at multiple levels necessitates contributions of multiple academic disciplines to advance prevention and intervention. Yet little training is available outside the social and behavioral sciences to encourage researchers in other disciplines such as biomedicine or economics to participate in this important effort. This short-term interdisciplinary education project """"""""Child Maltreatment and Partner Violence: Bridging the Medical/Social Science Gap"""""""" combines the expertise of faculty from multiple disciplines across four universities to create and conduct a three-part educational training program for young scholars that will facilitate their development of research on child maltreatment and/or intimate partner violence. This one-year R25 is led by the directors of two multidisciplinary CDC Injury Control Research Centers, the Brown Center for Violence and Injury Prevention at Washington University and the University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center in collaboration with the Injury Research Center at the Medical College in Wisconsin.
The aims of the project are to (1) create and implement an interdisciplinary training program designed to provide post-doctoral/young scientist trainees with the foundational knowledge to encourage their participation in behavioral and social science related to child maltreatment and/or intimate partner violence, including attention to ethical and measurement issues;(2) provide mentored, field research experiences for trainees after their training to help them develop concrete research plans;(3) assist trainees in developing and refining their own research plan to integrate their biomedical, clinical, economic and/or other training to focus on the prevention of or response to child maltreatment, intimate partner violence or their intersection;and (4) provide ongoing nationwide access to training materials by archiving lecture material from the seminars via the Society for the Advancement of Violence and Injury Research (SAVIR). Evaluation measures include implementation and satisfaction (process) as well as participant outcomes measured through post-tests and the quality and content of their research plans. This unique multi-disciplinary collaborative training project will help bridge gaps between researchers trained in health, neuroscience, genetics, economics, public health, public policy and other disciplines with those trained in social behavioral sciences so we can truly move to a transdisciplinary approach to preventing and treating child maltreatment and intimate partner violence.
Child maltreatment and intimate partner violence are significant public health concerns that result in tremendous personal, social and economic costs. The multi-determined nature of these public health concerns and the impact on multiple outcomes requires we move beyond work in single disciplines. This unique multi-disciplinary collaborative training project, """"""""Child Maltreatment and Partner Violence: Bridging the Medical/Social Science Gap"""""""" will help bridge gaps between researchers trained in health, neuroscience, genetics, economics, public health, public policy and other disciplines so we can truly move to a transdisciplinary approach to preventing and treating child maltreatment and intimate partner violence.
