Earlier this month, President Biden issued an Executive Order that focused on advancing women’s health and closing health disparities. Just in time for Women’s History Month, the Order brought attention to the not-so-distant history of excluding women from health research and the consequences of such policies for health disparities.
Going forward, working to improve women’s health will have to include strategies to prevent and respond effectively to violence against women. Here’s why.
Violence against women and girls is linked with a host of health problems. For many of us, the links to psychological distress probably jump to mind first. After all, decades of research have documented ties between violence against women and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, dissociation, anxiety, suicidality, and other forms of psychological distress.
However, violence against women and girls has serious implications for physical health, too. Of course, there are the obvious immediate injuries from violence that can require emergency care. These can range from bruises and broken bones to brain injuries. As I wrote in a recent blog post, brain injuries can arise from physical blows to the head as well as strangulation.
The price tag for the immediate health care costs is staggering. In 2008, a U.S. research team estimated that health care costs in the 12 months after intimate violence run up to $7.0 billion in the United States.
But the health impacts go far beyond the immediate aftermath of violence. Consider some of the long-term health consequences of intimate partner violence, which disproportionately affects women. For example, a recent systematic review by Dr. Eileen Wang and colleagues documented links between intimate partner violence and asthma. Across 37 studies, the research team found that intimate partner violence was linked with greater asthma prevalence and incidence as well as worsened morbidity for victims and their children.
Sexual assault, for which women are also disproportionately the victims, is linked with reproductive health problems—and much more. For example, a 2021 systematic review of 45 articles provided clear evidence of links between sexual violence and cardiovascular disease. These links have important public health implications, particularly given that cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of death among adults.
When I give talks on violence against women, I often talk about the social determinants of health. These are the conditions that affect our psychological and physical health. They are conditions into which we’re each born and in which we live, learn, and work.
For girls and women, intimate violence is common—in homes, workplaces, schools, faith organizations, and communities. Research shows that intimate violence is a social determinant of health and a driver of health inequities among women.
Recognizing the health implications of intimate violence on girls and women is important for identifying actions we can take to work toward health equity. For example, understanding the links between intimate violence and health can open doors to trauma-informed screening in health care settings to support holistic care for patients.
When we try to improve health systems to identify women who have been victimized to connect them with supports and services to address the short- or long-term consequences of trauma, this is called secondary or tertiary prevention.
Primary prevention needs to be a priority, too. This would mean working together to prevent intimate violence before it happens—to girls, women, and people of all genders. As I explore in Every 90 Seconds: Our Common Cause Ending Violence Against Women, we all share an interest in working together to stop intimate violence in the first place. Doing so is a sure path forward to health equity and a world where people of all genders can thrive.
References
DePrince, A.P. (2022). Every 90 Seconds: Our Common Cause Ending Violence Against Women. New York: Oxford University Press.
Intimate Violence and Women’s Health
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26.03.2024
Earlier this month, President Biden issued an Executive Order that focused on advancing women’s health and closing health disparities. Just in time for Women’s History Month, the Order brought attention to the not-so-distant history of excluding women from health research and the consequences of such policies for health disparities.
Going forward, working to improve women’s health will have to include strategies to prevent and respond effectively to violence against women. Here’s why.
Violence against women and girls is linked with a host of health problems. For many of us, the links to psychological distress probably jump to mind first. After all, decades of research have documented ties between violence against women and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, dissociation, anxiety, suicidality, and other forms of psychological distress.
However, violence against women and girls has serious implications for physical health, too. Of course,........
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