Bam! Thunk! Bam! I awaken to commotion at my front door. Clash! Boom! It sounds like someone is trying to knock down my door. I hear voices outside my ground-floor apartment. My boyfriend, Kenneth, wakes up immediately. The banging is getting louder and louder. We are convinced that someone's trying to break in. We walk out of my bedroom and down…

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is known to have negative health consequences for victims. For women living with HIV/AIDS, whose health may be compromised, exposure to IPV can be devastating. Yet few (if any) studies have explored the health implications of exposure to IPV among HIV-positive women. We begin to fill this gap by examining the…

Acceptability of a sexual violence (SV) risk reduction program called "RealConsent" designed for first-year female college students was conducted as part of a larger, randomized controlled trial. "RealConsent" uses web-based and mobile technology to deliver four 45-minute theoretically and empirically derived modules designed…

Few studies have examined the relationships between intimate partner violence (IPV) and the sexual and reproductive health outcomes of women in sub-Saharan countries in general and Ghana specifically. This study began to fill the gap by investigating whether individual- and community-level IPV influenced unwanted pregnancy and pregnancy loss among…

Background: African American women are at a disproportionate HIV risk compared with other U.S. women. Studies show that complex structural and social determinants, rather than individual behaviors, place African American women at greater risk of HIV infection; however, little is known about women's views of what puts them at risk. Aims: This study…

Although academically underexplored, economic abuse is common in most societies. Using data collected from 2,289 ever-married Ghanaian women, this study employed regression techniques to examine dimensions of economic abuse (employment sabotage, economic exploitation, and economic deprivation) on the cardiovascular, psychosocial, and overall…

While traditional HIV prevention programs with female sex workers (FSWs) in Karnataka, India, have focused on reducing HIV transmission between FSWs and clients through increased condom use, these programs have not fully addressed the transmission risk between FSWs and their nonpaying intimate partners (IPs). Condom use is infrequent and violence…

Background: Intimate partner violence (IPV) has been recognized as a public health problem since the late 20th century. To spur IPV prevention efforts nationwide, the DELTA PREP Project selected 19 state domestic violence coalitions to build organizational prevention capacity and catalyze IPV primary prevention strategies within their states.…

My talk will describe two public health problems facing women and children that were the focus of the work my colleagues and I did over my years as a health behavior change researcher. I start by addressing why a focus on women and children is important from a public health perspective and then provide two mini case studies: (1) identifying needs…

The purpose of this study is to see whether witnessing a very violent act at any point in the life course is associated with depressive symptoms and alcohol use in late life. The data come from a nationwide probability sample of older adults (N = 1,498). The findings reveal that witnessing violence is associated with more symptoms of depression…

The authors assessed a cohort of 2,335 students from the Minneapolis, Minnesota, area to identify predictors of violent behavior and to determine whether the predictors varied by gender. The sample was 76% White; boys and girls were equally represented. The majority lived with two parents. A measure of violent behavior collected at the end of the…

In the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd in 1999, a Community Advisory Committee requested assistance from its university partners (University of North Carolina) to address stress and increased risk for intimate partner violence (IPV). Collected from 12 study work sites, baseline data indicated that IPV rates were higher among blue-collar women in…

The objectives of this study were to examine outcomes of the Minnesota D.A.R.E. Plus Project on violence-related behaviors among middle school students and mediation analyses that test how the intervention was effective in reducing physical and verbal violence. Twenty-four schools were randomly assigned to the D.A.R.E. middle school curriculum,…