A Mentored Research Scientist Development Award will enable the Candidate to develop a productive, independent research career in the field of alcohol-related intimate partner violence (IPV). This award will provide the resources and time necessary to integrate the Candidate's current skills in IPV research using public health and law enforcement data with new research skills in general population studies, alcohol use, and healthcare utilization. Specific career development goals include 1) becoming a public health expert in the field of partner violence and alcohol use with particular emphasis on the use of public data; 2) increasing knowledge of scientifically sound, theory-based research in alcohol and violence; 3) gaining knowledge and skills in the design and conduct of studies on interpersonal violence that feature original data collection; and 4) fostering the Candidate's professional development as an independent researcher. These goals will be achieved through coursework, independent study, and applied educational activities. The main objective of the research is to examine the relationships between IPV, alcohol use, and healthcare utilization. Two studies are proposed to investigate these relationships, focusing on female victims and male perpetrators. Study 1 will utilize previously collected cross-sectional national survey data to assess the relationship between IPV victimization (and perpetration) and 1) alcohol use, and 2) healthcare utilization for alcohol and mental health treatment and nonprimary care. Study 2 will link police records from a major metropolitan city to state-wide hospital discharge records to from a population-based retrospective cohort study, using census data as the denominator for the unexposed cohort.
The specific aims are to determine: 1) the rate of police reported IPV by ethnicity and age, and 2) the age-adjusted hospitalization rate ratio overall and rates associated with alcohol, drug, mental health, and violence-related diagnoses between the exposed and the unexposed cohorts for victims and perpetrators. Both studies will focus on racial and ethnic disparities. ? ?
