The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #49471

Jeanne Louise Ward, MSW, Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium, 122 East 42nd Street, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10168, 212-551-2734, jeanne@theIRC.org

The Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium (RHRC) is currently engaged in a two-year project to improve international and local capacity to measure, prevent, and respond to gender-based violence (GBV) among conflict-affected populations. A notable limitation in designing GBV programs in most refugee, internally displaced, and post-conflict settings is the lack of local data about the scope and nature of GBV, or best practices for qualitatively and quantitatively describing the problem. In order to redress this lack, the RHRC is designing and field-testing a series of standard assessment tools, including focus group questions, individual structured interview questions, a situational analysis matrix, and a prevalence questionnaire. The purpose of this presentation is to briefly introduce the tools, provide a basic rationale for their use, and share the preliminary results of select field tests undertaken in Africa, Asia, and Europe. The presentation will also briefly highlight some of the additional projects underway by the RHRC to support GBV field activities in humanitarian settings.

Learning Objectives:

• To learn about the challenges facing gender-based violence program designers in conflict-affected settings.
• To learn about new tools developed for use in GBV programming in refugee and conlfict-affected settings.
• To identify the various programs underway to respond to GBV using these tools and the approaches the support their use.

Keywords: Women, Violence

Related Web page: www.rhrc.org/

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.