191878 Area disadvantage and intimate partner homicide: An ecological analysis of North Carolina counties, 2004-2005

Monday, November 9, 2009: 4:35 PM

Aubrey Spriggs Madkour, PhD , Department of Community Health Sciences, Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA
Sandra L. Martin, PhD , Department of Maternal and Child Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
Carolyn Tucker Halpern, PhD , Department of Maternal and Child Health, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC
Victor J. Schoenbach, PhD , Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC
  
Although past studies in large urban centers have found area disadvantage associated with female-victim intimate partner homicide (IPH), whether this relationship generalizes to male-victim IPH or to non-urban areas has not yet been examined, nor have possible mediators been explored. Using data from the North Carolina Violent Death Reporting System (2004-05), the 2000 Census, and the North Carolina Council for Women, we conducted an ecological assessment of these relationships in 100 North Carolina counties. The average annual county female-victim IPH rates varied from 0 to 7.0 per 100,000 population (mean=1.0); the male-victim rate varied from 0 to 3.8 per 100,000 population (mean=0.7). In unadjusted Poisson regression models, county disadvantage was marginally positively related to female-victim IPH (incidence rate ratio [IRR]=1.09; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.00-1.19) and significantly positively related to male victim IPH (IRR=1.16, 95% CI 1.02-1.31). After adjusting for county demographic characteristics (percent population age 20-40, sex ratio and sex ratio squared), significant associations remained for male-victim IPH (IRR=1.25, 95% CI 1.05–1.48) but not female-victim IPH (IRR=1.08, 95% CI 0.95 – 1.22). County urbanicity did not modify these associations. Of the mediator variables examined (shelter availability, per capita funding for intimate partner violence services), none was supported as a mediator between county disadvantage and male-victim IPH. Results suggest disparities across North Carolina counties in male-victim IPH according to county disadvantage. Future research should explore other potential mediators (i.e., service accessibility and law enforcement responses), as well as test the robustness of findings using additional years of data.

Learning Objectives:
1. Describe rates of female-victim and male-victim intimate partner homicide in NC counties 2. Discuss the relationship between county-level socioeconomic disadvantage and intimate partner homicide in NC counties 3. Analyze whether victims' services availability and funding mediates the relationship between county disadvantage and intimate partner homicide rates in NC

Keywords: Domestic Violence, Community

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I had primary responsibility for formulating the research questions, data cleaning and analysis, as well as writing up the results. The present analysis is part of my dissertation work at UNC Chapel Hill.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

See more of: Violence Epidemiology
See more of: Epidemiology