Awarded Cooperative Agreement to Prevent Violence and Violence-Related Injury

Description

St. Luke’s Roosevelt Institute of Health Sciences is developing, implementing, and evaluating a model that integrates culturally-competent, intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual violence (SV) screening, and early intervention and services into its comprehensive HIV care center.

Patients will be screened for current and lifetime IPV/SV at initial and annual medical care visits and as needed. Those who screen positive will be referred to a local, community-based, IPV/SV victims’ services center that uses an empowerment model to deliver culturally-competent IPV/SV services in the first phase. The second phase will integrate identical services into the HIV care center.

Goals are to improve the identification of IPV/SV in the HIV-infected population at the HIV care center; to improve access to culturally-competent IPV/SV services tailored for the HIV-infected population; and to reduce the occurrence of intergenerational violence in the HIV-infected population.

Results of this project will expand the knowledge and understanding of IPV/SV in the HIV positive population; inform health care practitioners about how to respond to IPV/SV in a busy, chronic disease or HIV care setting; and how to access culturally-competent IPV/SV services tailored to the HIV positive population. This project will demonstrate, within the HIV care center context, which model of IPV/SV service delivery—integrated or stand alone—is the most effective and for whom.