Collaborating to address intimate partner violence: Gown and town partnerships

In 2002, researchers, practitioners, and policy makers came together for a conference hosted by ten different federal institutes and agencies to develop a comprehensive research agenda for children exposed to domestic violence. Identified in that conference was a need to identify and measure both indicators of system changes and individual and family changes that occur overtime and under different circumstances when programs are implemented in the community. Public health nurses interface with women and children experiencing violence on a daily basis. In an effort to move research from the university setting to the field, the DOVE study has been implemented to rigorously test the effectiveness of a structured evidence-based intimate partner violence (IPV) intervention for pregnant women. This intervention is being delivered in a real-world model of using public health prenatal home visitors from one city and one state health department home visitation programs. The DOVE program is directed at empowering new mothers in order to prevent their children's exposure to IPV. In testing this system change we expect to see improvement not only in maternal health but also improvement in the development and health of the infant. This presentation will discuss the DOVE program, how the cooperation of the Baltimore City Health Department and the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services has been obtained in order for two universities' schools of nursing to be able to test the DOVE intervention in this natural setting, and lessons learned during the implementation phase.