Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is widely recognized as an important public health problem because of its high prevalence, its potential for serious physical injury, including death, its association with poor physical and mental health outcomes, and its burden on health services. However, few trials have assessed the effectiveness of IPV interventions, and available evaluations have shown limited success. Most studies have targeted IPV survivors admitted to shelters, rather than community-dwelling women identified from clinical settings; the latter women are likely to be younger and at an earlier stage in the """"""""cycle of abuse"""""""". Although IPV is equally prevalent in urban and rural populations, few studies have focused on women residing rural areas. The proposed R21 pilot study has been designed in response to these deficiencies. Specifically, we will conduct a cross-sectional study to collect important baseline data on the IPV experiences, related health correlates, and access to local IPV resources in a consecutive sample of 1000 reproductive aged women attending a large women's health clinic in central Iowa. Nearly 40 percent of patients attending this clinic reside in rural areas.
The specific aims of this cross-sectional study are to: 1) estimate IPV prevalence; 2) identify demographic and health correlates of IPV victims; 3) assess steps IPV victims have taken to increase their safety, and the barriers they encountered; and 4) conduct geographical information systems analyses to determine accessibility of community resources to IPV victims, particularly for those living in rural areas. Guided by the findings of this R21 pilot study, we plan to identify sustainable IPV intervention strategies that will be acceptable to this population and tailored to individual women's resources and needs for community support and medical care. Our proposed intervention will be a community-based effort to strengthen the social support networks of battered women, ideally before the battering has been brought to the attention of any health or legal authorities. Without baseline data on this target population, IPV prevention programs are likely to fail or possibly place women at an even greater risk of violence. Thus, the proposed cross-sectional study will lay the groundwork to develop and test a future individualized, community-based intervention program. Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is widely recognized as an important public health problem because of its high prevalence, its potential for serious physical injury, including death, its association with poor physical and mental health outcomes, and its burden on health services. Few trials, however, have assessed the effectiveness of IPV interventions; and available evaluations have shown limited success. The proposed cross-sectional study will lay the groundwork to develop and test a future community-based intervention program by collecting essential baseline data on the IPV experiences, health-related correlates, and access to local IPV resources in the target population of women attending a large women's health clinic in central Iowa. ? ? ? ?
| Peek-Asa, Corinne; Wallis, Anne; Harland, Karisa et al. (2011) Rural disparity in domestic violence prevalence and access to resources. J Womens Health (Larchmt) 20:1743-9 |
| Beyer, Kirsten M M; Saftlas, Audrey F; Wallis, Anne B et al. (2011) A probabilistic sampling method (PSM) for estimating geographic distance to health services when only the region of residence is known. Int J Health Geogr 10:4 |
| Saftlas, Audrey F; Wallis, Anne B; Shochet, Tara et al. (2010) Prevalence of intimate partner violence among an abortion clinic population. Am J Public Health 100:1412-5 |
