Material Listing

"It is vitally important that the Australian health system, and birthing services in particular, are safe, confidential places where women receive effective support and high quality care if they disclose abuse. How prepared the Australian health system is to respond to these challenges is the focus of this paper."

Sections:

The Healthy People 2010 Leading Health Indicators (LHIs) covered in this fact sheet include: Overweight and Obesity, Tobacco Use, Substance Abuse, Responsible Sexual Behavior, Mental Health, Injury and Violence, Immunization, and Access to Health Care. The LHIs includes a total of ten health indicators and were listed by the US Department of Health and Human Services to measure the health and well-being of the nation for this decade.

The study was supported by VicHealth in partnership with the Department of Human Services and was conducted with contributions from a range of experts from across Victoria and elsewhere. While focusing on health, it complements a vast body of evidence demonstrating the serious social and economic consequences of intimate partner violence for individuals, families and communities.

Contents include:

The study provides: a definition of each type of violence, the economic impact of the violence, the health care cost of the violence, trends in the violence, statistics on the incidence of the violence, a break down by race and age, a break down of hospital visits and hospital admissions, the long term impacts of the violence, and social services that address this form of violence.

Its findings include that more than 50,000 violent crimes were reported to PA police departments in 1994 at a cost of more than $233 million in PA inpatient hospital admissions.

Highlights the prevalence, risks, and lethality of violence against pregnant women.

Updated in Summer 2001, This fact sheet lists statistics regarding domestic violence and/or battering incidents. The fact sheet lists statistics under the following headings: Prevalence; Health Consequences of Domestic Violence; Children's Health and Domestic Violence; Cost of Domestic Violence; Identification of Domestic Violence (highlighting present screening practices in health care settings); and Pregnancy.

"One of the most common forms of violence against women is that performed by a husband or intimate male partner. Although women can be violent in relationships with men, and violence is also found in same-sex partnerships, the overwhelming health burden of partner violence is borne by women at the hands of men."

This fact sheet pulls from selected national studies to describe the global epidemic of intimate partner violence in the following categories:

This paper presents findings from several studies demonstrating that women who experience domestic violence are more at risk for mental health problems.

"Recognizing the need to better measure both the scope of the problem of intimate partner violence (IPV) as well as resulting economic costsÑin particular, those related to health careÑCongress funded the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to conduct a study to obtain national estimates of the occurrence of IPV-related injuries, to estimate their costs to the health care system, and to recommend strategies to prevent IPV and its consequences." The resulting report, Costs of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in the United States: describes briefly the development

"Does intimate partner violence occur more in disadvantaged neighborhoods? For women, having financial problems in their intimate relationships and living in an economically distressed neighborhood combine to create greater risk of injury and violence. This NIJ Research in Brief (NCJ 205004) discusses who is most at risk and details the role that economic policies and employment practices might play in reducing the risk of intimate violence."