SPECIAL SESSION: Global Research Collaborations to Prevent and Respond to Intimate Partner Violence

Description/Overview: Gender based violence (GBV), including intimate partner violence (IPV) is a significant and widespread public health issue. Among women globally, 1 in 3 women report physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, most typically at the hands of their male partner. IPV is associated with numerous negative physical and mental health consequences, yet few IPV interventions have been proven effective in reducing the negative health and social consequences of IPV for women and their families. Safety planning is the most widely advocated intervention to reduce IPV, yet the vast majority of abused women never access safety planning services. Our challenge is to increase women’s access to safety planning, with the opportunity to consider their unique priorities (e.g. privacy, feelings for partner, severity of violence, social support/status) and level of danger in the relationship during and when ending an abusive relationship. Therefore, a global collaboration of researchers from the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong have come together in a collaborative research effort to conduct rigorous clinical trials in each country to evaluate the effectiveness an interactive, personalized safety decision aid delivered via internet and/or smartphone application (“App”) to improve safety and health for women in abusive intimate relationships. The safety decision aid is adapted to the context of each country by the lead investigators and their teams with support of collaborators in the other countries. The investigators have shared resources and expertise to support each other in obtaining research funding to implement the clinical trial with common outcomes for comparisons across the diverse countries. Findings from the US based trial (completed in May 2014), preliminary findings from ongoing trials in New Zealand and Canada, and details on the start-up of the research studies in Australia and Hong Kong will be provided during the presentation.