Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

Violence against women is a major global public health, social policy, and human rights concern. Alcohol and drug use are leading causes of this violence, by increasing the risk, frequency, and severity of violent incidents. Accordingly, the proposed Planning and Dissemination activity will address knowledge gaps on current monitoring efforts, policies, and strategies concerning violence against women, and will examine the role that alcohol and drugs play in these violent incidents. Specifically, a meeting of key stakeholders from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, and Peru will be convened: 1) To discuss current reporting barriers, monitoring efforts, policies, and strategies regarding violence against women, and whether these monitoring efforts, policies, and strategies take into consideration alcohol and drug use. 2) To discuss potentially acceptable and feasible interventions to improve and address the reporting and monitoring of violent incidents against women, and to determine the fraction of these incidents which involve alcohol and drug use. 3) To discuss potentially acceptable and feasible societal strategies, community/organizational strategies, interpersonal strategies, and individual strategies to reduce violence against women. 4) To create a report of synthesized findings for dissemination to key stakeholders. The outcomes of this project are multifold. Firstly, this project will increase awareness of violence against women through the knowledge exchange between key researchers and policy makers. Secondly, a full-scale grant application will be developed with the aim of (i) improving the reporting and monitoring of alcohol- and drug-related violence against women, and (ii) identifying, implementing, and evaluating policies which can reduce the occurrence of violence against women.