Watch the webinar: Improving Health Outcomes through Violence Prevention: Promising Strategies from Community Health Centers
Use the toolkit: Prevent, Assess, and Respond: A Domestic Violence Toolkit for Health Centers & Domestic Violence Programs
We lead efforts to help community health care centers and domestic violence programs address intimate partner violence (IPV) and human trafficking.
IPV Toolkit
The toolkit, which we helped develop, gives HRSA grantees the tools to identify and respond to IPV.
From 2014-2016, 10 community health centers and 10 domestic violence advocacy organizations formed partnerships and developed strategies to:
- Talk with patients about IPV and healthy relationships.
- Use evidence-based interventions to help survivors of IPV.
- Refer survivors to domestic violence advocacy organizations and community health centers.
- Partner with domestic violence advocacy organizations to ensure care is patient-centered.
Technical Assistance
How can your health center respond to IPV?
Follow these five steps:
- Partner Build partnerships with community-based domestic violence/sexual assault (DV/SA) programs to help your healthcare setting provide trauma-informed and responsive care for survivors
- Prepare Create buy-in for a DV/SA program and write a new or updated DV/SA policy
- Adopt Implement the evidence-based intervention to provide confidential education to all patients
- Train Promote team-based care by training the entire healthcare setting on the impact of DV/SA on health outcomes
- Evaluate Include IPV in quality improvement goals and evaluate the impact that partnerships and education have on health outcomes of patients
Project Catalyst
Project Catalyst helped improve responses and advance policy for IPV and human trafficking in community health centers and domestic violence programs.
Which organizations participated?
State teams included leaders from state primary care associations, state health departments, and state domestic violence coalitions.
How did the teams work together?
To address IPV and human trafficking, state teams:
- Used training curricula, health care provider resources, patient education materials, and quality improvement tools.
- Formed partnerships between community health centers and domestic violence programs.
- Made new policy level changes across the health care delivery system.
- Trained community health centers to educate all patients.
- Engaged at least 50% of the HRSA-funded health centers in their state or territory by the end of the project period.
What was the impact of Project Catalyst?
Project Catalyst partners trained over 1,200 health care providers and domestic violence advocates across 34 participating health centers and 29 participating domestic violence service providers.
- All health centers that completed follow up assessments implemented a policy in place to see patients alone. This is a key practice to provide privacy and confidentiality for survivors.
- 70% of trained health center and domestic violence providers reported that they were referring patients to each other for needed services.
- 60% of trained providers reported an increase in their ability to address IPV and human trafficking and utilize trauma-informed approaches in their work.
- At the conclusion of the second phase of the project, the Project Catalyst model was scaled a national partnership to provide training and technical assistance to nearly 1,400 health centers across all 50 states and the U.S. territories.
Technical Assistance
Request Training and Technical Assistance: Health Partners on IPV + Exploitation
Our Partners
We partnered with the Administration on Children & Families (ACF) and Futures Without Violence (FUTURES) on the IPV toolkit and Project Catalyst. The University of Pittsburgh conducts evaluations for Project Catalyst.
Get Help
Are you or someone you know experiencing human trafficking or IPV?
National Human Trafficking Hotline Free | 24/7 | Confidential
Call: 888-373-7888
Text: 233733 (BEFREE) or use TTY: 711
National Domestic Violence Hotline Free | 24/7 | Confidential
Call or Text: 800-799-7233 or
800-787-3224 (TTY)
Spanish chat 1-7 p.m. ET
Note: Providers can also call this hotline for treatment guidance.
OWH at a Glance
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