Public Health Strategies Identified to Reduce Family Violence
The family can be a violent place, whether "family" means married couples, partners living together, and even people in dating relationships. Social agencies including law enforcement, social services and the health care system see the victims of violence, and those who wreak it. Too often different agencies have struggled alone to deal with the havoc family violence causes.
Now the Milwaukee Academy of Medicine, including faculty from the Medical College of Wisconsin, has taken a close look at family violence from a public health viewpoint and issued a comprehensive report on strategies that all the diverse agencies can implement together to treat and prevent family violence.
"We used the public health model to examine the scope of the problem and have developed strategies based on this model to reduce family violence in Milwaukee County, says Stephen Hargarten, M.D., M.P.H., chairman of the Academy's public health committee and professor and chairman of emergency medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. "We see the results of family violence in our emergency rooms. Our long range goal is to create an environment that is violence-free in which family violence is unacceptable."
Their background research uncovered many facts about family violence, nationally and in Wisconsin:
- Eight percent of women reported experiencing violence by their partners in the last year -- over four million women a year.
- Seventy percent of men who batter their partners also batter their children.
- A history of violence in the family of origin is the best predictor of family violence.
- There were over 30,000 cases of family violence in Wisconsin in 1996, 40 percent of them in Milwaukee County; of the 201 homicides in the state, 63 were family violence related.
As these statistics show, family violence is a problem in Wisconsin, and particularly in the city of Milwaukee. Strategies to combat it must be comprehensive and involve all levels of society. Using other successful public health initiatives as a model, the Academy of Medicine recommends work in five areas:
- Increasing community awareness of the problem.
- Expanding training for professionals from all fields who work with victims.
- Enhancing community-based services and treatment.
- Promoting funding for research.
- Promoting legislation to reduce family violence.
Under these five areas the Academy has recommended many specific strategies including:
- Developing a prevention program to be used in all MPS schools and social service agencies.
- Creating a supervised visitation center where children from violent or abusive families can safely meet their parents.
- Making family violence investigation a part of all neglect and abuse investigations.
- Increasing coordination of services at all levels, including standardizing procedures for all professionals when confronting violent family situations.
- Expanding research to find out if criminal justice and social service programs are reducing family violence.
- Incorporating substance abuse and mental health services into violent abuser treatment programs.
- Increasing funding for the Milwaukee Safe At Home media campaign to spread the message that "Domestic violence is a crime that affects the entire family".
- Increasing support for workplace programs that assist battered women and address stalking issues.
- Developing a coordinated response system County-wide that would include all agencies, including health care, to work with both victims and perpetrators.
Article Created: 1999-08-30
Article Updated: 2001-10-16
MCW Health News presents up-to-date information on patient care and medical research by the physicians of the Medical College of Wisconsin.
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