Grant: Team Grant: Violence, Gender and Health - LOI

With the global aging of the population, violence against older adults is a pressing concern. Like other forms of interpersonal violence, older women fall victim to this violence more often than men. Such experiences have serious negative effects on women's physical and mental health. Although many studies have examined this topic, little research has focused on the ways in which violence against older immigrant women in Canada can be prevented. The purpose of the proposed research program is to design and test a complex approach (intervention) to prevent violence and its negative influence on health outcomes among older immigrant women. The program will bring together researchers, health, social services and settlement providers, older women and their community members, and other key partners in various levels of government. The work is guided by an ecological framework and a feminist theoretical perspective in order to examine the individual, familial, community and societal factors that affect older women's experiences of and responses to violence. The program will involve four phases: 1) to identify the contributing factors to violence against older immigrant women and the existing intervention strategies to address this violence in order to provide a foundation for development of a multi-level intervention, 2) to validate the relevance of the identified contributing factors and selected strategies in the prevention of violence across the four provinces through focus groups with abused older women, their families and community members from various immigrant groups, and health, social and settlement service providers and policymakers, 3) to integrate the findings gleaned from the common and unique experiences of violence into the design of a multi-level, multi-component intervention, and 4) to test the applicability, suitability, and effectiveness of the designed intervention in the prevention of violence and promotion of health among older immigrant women.