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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Catherine A. Taylor, PhD¹, Neil Boris, MD¹, Sherryl Scott Heller, PhD², Gretchen Clum, PhD¹, Janet C. Rice, PhD³, and Charles H. Zeanah, MD². (1) Community Health Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, 1440 Canal Street, Suite 2300, New Orleans, LA 70112-2715, 504-988-0292, cathy.a.taylor@gmail.com, (2) Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, Tulane University Health Sciences Center, 1440 Canal Street, New Orleans, LA 70112, (3) Biostatistics, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, 1440 Canal Street, New Orleans, LA 70112

Homeless youth are an understudied yet especially vulnerable population. Sixty homeless youth were interviewed regarding their history of childhood maltreatment (CM), intimate partner violence (IPV), and exposure to violence in the community. There was a high prevalence of and a high degree of overlap between multiple types of exposure to violence in this sample: all measured types of CM (physical, sexual, and emotional) were inter-related and also were associated with exposure to community violence. In multivariate analyses that controlled for gender, cumulative childhood abuse and exposure to community violence both predicted IPV victimization. Gender moderated the effect of one relationship: emotional abuse in childhood raised the risk for IPV victimization for girls but not for boys. Only CM history of sexual abuse predicted IPV perpetration. Findings suggest that cumulative exposures to violence create cumulative risk for experiencing more violence; homeless youth may be particularly vulnerable to this additive effect.

Learning Objectives:

• List the types of violence that are inter-related and associated with intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization within a sample of homeless youth
• Articulate the gender-related difference in risk for IPV victimization within this sample
• Name the one type of violence that confers greater risk for IPV perpetration in this sample

Keywords: Homeless, Violence

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation