Categories
DV/IPV Sexual Assault

The (Economic) Cost of Violence

Everything can be looked at in economic terms, including violence. It’s important info to have at your disposal, because it can strengthen a grant proposal or negotiations with your healthcare system for an FTE or program. Enough’s been written on the subject that I figured it would be good to review the literature. I’ve chosen to focus mainly on the costs of violence against women. [UPDATE: You can find financial cost of child abuse here.] Unless otherwise indicated, everything listed is full text (if it wasn’t available free online, you’ll have a link to free abstracts). I’m organizing these by pub date, with most recent at the beginning:

2012

Overview of Studies on the Costs of Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (PDF) (Council of Europe, Gender Equality and Violence Against Women Division, Directorate General of Human Rights and Rule of Law)

An Estimation of the Economic Impact of Spousal Violence in Canada, 2009 (PDF) (Department of Justice Canada)

Cost of Injury Reports Application from the CDC has been updated. Using the WISQARS database, the applications allows you to “find cost of injury estimates for fatal or nonfatal injuries classified either by intent and mechanism or by body region and nature of injury”. From the site:

Important Updates: In addition to allowing user-provided data to be integrated into the cost estimation process, this new version of Cost of Injury Reports incorporates three basic changes, effective 04/25/2012:

Updated unit (per person) work loss cost estimates: These updated unit work loss cost estimates affect total and average work loss cost estimates for both fatal and nonfatal injuries. For further details regarding this update, click here.

Corrected unit medical cost estimates: These corrected unit medical cost estimates affect total and average medical cost estimates for nonfatal emergency department treated-and-released injuries. Cost estimates for fatal injuries and for nonfatal hospitalized injuries are not affected by this correction. For further details regarding this update, click here.

Average costs: For reports involving injury deaths classified by body region and/or nature of injury, average costs are now expressed per person (similar to the averages for all other types of injury outcomes and classification schemes). Such averages were previously expressed in terms of apportioned cases. For further details regarding this update, click here.

Violence Containment Spending in the United States (FULL TEXT)

Institute for Economics and Peace

The Economic Costs of Partner Violence and the Cost-Benefit of Civil Protection Orders.

Logan, T.K., Walker, R., and Hoyt, W. Journal of Interpersonal Violence 2012 Apr;27(6): 1137-54

2011

Costs and Consequences of Sexual Violence and Cost-Effective Solutions

National Alliance to End Sexual Violence

Social and economic costs of violence–workshop summary

Deepali M. Patel and Rachel M. Taylor, Rapporteurs; Forum on Global Violence Prevention; Institute of Medicine

Attributing Selected Costs to Intimate Partner Violence in a Sample of Women Who Have Left Abusive Partners: A Social Determinants of Health Approach (PDF)

Varcoe, C., et al. (Canadian study)

2010

The healthcare costs of domestic and sexual violence (fact sheet).

Futures Without Violence, updated March 2010

Changes in health care costs over time following the cessation of intimate partner violence.

Fishman PA, Bonomi AE, Anderson ML, Reid RJ, Rivara FP.

J Gen Intern Med. 2010 Sep;25(9):920-5. Epub 2010 Apr 23.

A review of cost measures for the economic impact of domestic violence.

Chan KL, Cho EY.

Trauma Violence Abuse. 2010 Jul;11(3):129-43.

2009

Health care utilization and costs associated with physical

and nonphysical-only intimate partner violence.

Bonomi AE, Anderson ML, Rivara FP, Thompson RS.                             Health Serv Res. 2009 Jun;44(3):1052-67. Epub 2009 Mar 17.

Hidden Costs in Health Care: The Economic Impact of Violence and Abuse

Dolezal, T.et al. Academy on Violence & Abuse

Intimate Partner Violence: High Costs to Households and Communities

International Center for Research on Women

See also: Bonomi & Corso’s presentation at AVA, 2009

2008

Methods for estimating medical expenditures attributable to intimate partner violence.

Brown DS, et al.

J Interpers Violence. 2008 Dec;23(12):1747-66

2007

Cost of Sexual Violence in Minnesota

Minnesota Department of Health

The Effects and Costs of Intimate Partner Violence for Work Organizations

Reeves, C. & O’Leary-Kelly, A.M.

Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 22, No. 3, 327-344

The effect of intimate partner violence on health care costs and utilization for children living in the home. (FULL TEXT)

Rivara FP, Anderson ML, Fishman P, Bonomi AE et al.

Pediatrics 2007;120(6):1270-7.

Medical Costs and Productivity Losses Due to Interpersonal and Self-Directed Violence in the United States

Phaedra S. Corso, et al.

Am J Prev Med 2007;32(6)

2006

Making the Case for Domestic Violence Prevention Through the Lens of Cost-Benefit: A Manual for Domestic Violence Prevention Practitioners

Browne-Miller, A., Transforming Communities: Technical Assistance, Training and Resource Center (TC-TAT)

The welfare cost of violence across countries

Soares, R.R.

Journal of Health Economics, 25(5), September 2006, Pages 821-846

Long-term costs of intimate partner violence in a sample of female HMO enrollees.

Jones AS, et al.

Womens Health Issues. 2006 Sep-Oct;16(5):252-61.

2005

A Considerable Sacrifice: The Costs of Sexual Violence in the U. S. Armed Forces

Hansen, C. The Miles Foundation

The costs of interpersonal violence—an international review

Waters, H.R., et al.

Health Policy, 73(3) 8 September 2005, pp 303-315

Gender-Based Violence: A Price Too High

From: UNFPA State of World Population 2005

United Nations Population Fund

2004

The Economic Dimensions of Interpersonal Violence

Waters, H., et al., World Health Organization

The economic toll of intimate partner violence against women in the United States.

Max, W. et al.

Violence Vict. 2004 Jun;19(3):259-72.

2002

Economic Costs of Domestic Violence

Laing, L. & Bobic, N., Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse, University of New South Wales

The Rape Tax: Tangible and Intangible Costs of Sexual Violence

Post, L.A., et al.

Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 17, No. 7, 773-782 (2002)

1999

Intimate partner violence against women: do victims cost health plans more?

Wisner, C.L., et al.

J Fam Pract. 1999 Jun;48(6):439-43

Costs of health care use by women HMO members with a history of childhood abuse and neglect.

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1999 Jul;56(7):609-13.

Walker EA, Unutzer J, Rutter C, Gelfand A, Saunders K,

VonKorff M, Koss MP, Katon W.

PUB DATE UNKNOWN

The Cost of Violence/Stress at Work and the Benefits of a Violence/Stress-Free Work Environment

Hoel, H., et al. International Labour Organization

BONUS TOOL (I can’t speak to validity or reliability, but it’s a cool concept)

Texas Health Resources DV Costs Calculator

See also: Financial Cost of Child Abuse

Categories
Child Abuse Sexual Assault

New Online Courses at IAFN

Two new online courses have been announced at IAFN: SANE Dialogues: Focus Group on the Use of nPEP in SANE Programs and Patterns of Injury in Non-Accidental Childhood Fatalities. They’re free for members; non-members pay $10 each. It would appear that there are CEUs attached, but I could not find any specifics related to how many for either course. If you’re a Firefox user, be forewarned: you may not be able to complete the posttest to get credit for the course, so Internet Explorer is really the only way to access this content (which frankly sucks for Mac users like me).

Categories
Sexual Assault

Guest Post: Evaluating SANE Trainers

I’m pleased to welcome Jennifer Pierce Weeks to Forensic Healthcare Online. As a clinician, administrator, national trainer and President of IAFN, she is another one of those folks who spends a lot of time talking with people in the field, and has a great perspective on healthcare-focused, patient-centered, sustainable programming.

We’ve been talking a lot lately about the issue of quality in SANE/SAFE education. There are no mandated qualifications for who provides the education, so caveat emptor is the rule of the day. IAFN does not police training, but provides education guidelines that describe the minimum body of knowledge all SANEs/SAFEs should possess (there are also training standards for sexual assault forensic examiners (PDF) around the National Protocol). Needless to say, some of the education out there is definitely better than others.

Categories
Articles of Note Child Abuse DV/IPV Elder Abuse/Neglect Sexual Assault

Articles of Note: July Edition

Time once again for a run down of some of the new and noteworthy articles in the current literature. Most of these are from the June/July/August issues. As always, please keep in mind this in no way a comprehensive list; simply items that have caught my attention from a selection of peer-reviewed journals. Most links lead to PubMed abstracts (except for one, which goes to Ingenta); from there you can choose what’s worth a.) paying for; b.) a pilgrimage to your nearest medical library;  or c.) downloading via the full-text access you possibly have at your disposal.

Just a warning: it’s a lengthy list this month. There’s all kinds of good stuff being published right now…

Categories
Sexual Assault

Weekly Wrap-Up @ the Sustainability Blog

I’m back from the desert and looking forward to a long weekend. I’m going to take part of the day off, so just an abbreviated warp-up (wow, now that’s a typo!) wrap-up today. Because I was gone all week, only a couple things on the sustainability site:

  • A fascinating article about the current freefall of the Memphis SANE program–heartbreaking when you run a national sustainability project
  • A beginner’s guide to online marketing and fundraising webinar announcement

Have a safe and happy 4th for all of my American readers (and for my Canadian readers, a belated happy Canada Day!). I’ll be back Monday with new content, the July edition of Articles of Note, and a big announcement!

Categories
Child Abuse Sexual Assault

Clinical Guide: Toluidine Blue Dye

Research

There’s been very little written about TB dye in the peer reviewed literature over the past 30 years, so I have included all of it (that I could find) here. Some discuss the utility of TB dye in greater depth than others. As with any research, it is imperative that you read these articles (particularly the older ones) with a critical eye toward the methodology used and the relevance of their findings in light of advances in the science. All links go to PubMed abstracts.

Factors that influence the variability in findings of anogenital injury in adolescent/adult sexual assault victims: a review of the forensic literature. (Laitinen, et al., 2013)

Reliability of female genital injury detection after sexual assault. (Sachs, et al., 2011)

Comparison of methods for identifying ano-genital injury after consensual intercourse. (Zink, et al., 2009)

Validation set correlates of anogenital injury after sexual assault. (Drocton, et al. 2008)

Significance of toluidine blue positive findings after speculum examination for sexual assault. (Jones, et al., 2004)

Signs of genital trauma in adolescent rape victims examined acutely. (Adams, et al., 2000)

Effects of toluidine blue and destaining reagents used in sexual assault examinations on the ability to obtain DNA profiles from postcoital vaginal swabs. (Hochmeister, et al., 1997)

Medical assessment of children who have been recently raped. (Kaufhold, 1993. No abstract available; full citation: Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, Volume 2, Issue 1, 1993, Pages 105 – 112)

Toluidine blue in the detection at autopsy of perineal and perianal victims of sexual abuse. (Bays & Lewman, 1992)

Toluidine blue in the detection of perineal lacerations in pediatric and adolescent sexual abuse victims. (McCauley, et al., 1986)

Use of toluidine blue for documentation of traumatic intercourse. (Lauber & Souma, 1982)

(See also: NIJ’s Sexual Assault Medical Forensic Examination Research Forum: Examination Technology for current research questions about TB Dye)

Books

Some of the textbooks make mention of TB dye and its application. I’ve included links to them via Google Books. Just like with the research articles, read with a critical eye–I’m not endorsing any particular textbook, just giving you the particulars of where to find the information.

Atlas of Sexual Violence (Henry, pp. 100-101)

Forensic Emergency Medicine (2nd Ed.). (Olshaker, et al. pp. 99-101)

Obstetric & Gynecologic Emergencies. (Pearlman, et al., p. 478)

Forensic Nursing. (Pyrek, p. 164)

Clinical Forensic Medicine. (Stark, pp. 92-93).

Manual of Forensic & Emergency Medicine. (Riviello, pp. 115-116)

Color Atlas of Sexual Assault (Girardin, et al., pp. 102, 120-121)

Sexual Assault Across the Lifespan (Girardin, et al. starting on p. 661)

Sexual Assault (Crowley, pp. 85-86: no page views in Google Books)

 

National Protocol for Sexual Assault Medical Forensic Examinations*

Search toluidine blue dye to find the various areas where TB dye is mentioned

*many state and local protocols address TB dye use, but those are too numerous to include here

To Purchase:

Single dose applicators (25 or 50/box): National Forensic Nursing Institute

{and some general commentary here…}

 

Categories
Sexual Assault

Sexual Assault on College Campuses

The Ash Institute at Harvard’s Kennedy School has an amazing series of “expert chats” with topics near and dear to my heart. One of the archived chats is Sexual Assault on College Campuses, and it features some incredibly knowledgeable speakers, including Dr. David Lisak and Marnie Shiels from the Office on Violence Against Women. You must register with the site to access the archived materials, which is free.

Categories
DV/IPV Sexual Assault

Working with LGBTIQ Survivors of Violence

OVC is hosting a web forum June 24th at 2pm on best practices for assisting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersexed, and queer (LGBTIQ) survivors of violence. As with other OVC web forums, questions are submitted in advance and then discussed live during the foum. For information on how to participate click here. You can view previous web forum discussions here.

Categories
Sexual Assault

False Allegations

MNCASA is sponsoring a webinar on responding to false allegations of sexual assault, Monday, June 29th from 12-1:30 CDT. From the announcement: False reports of sexual assault are rare yet they attract significant attention from the media and influence public opinion about the prevalence of sexual violence. The webinar will explore this challenging issue from a number of perspectives, with the overall goal of providing tools that will help you respond effectively to difficult questions about victim credibility.

Categories
Sexual Assault

HIV Post Exposure Prophylaxis & Sexual Assault

Okay, so this is one of the webinars I’ve been waiting for: IAFN is hosting a webinar on HIV PEP that should be stellar (if I wasn’t going to be flying home from California that day, I would already be registered for this one). It will be held July 2nd from 2-3:30 pm ET, and it is free, people. Free. No CEs, sadly, but good (much needed) content.

Topics to be covered during the webinar include incidence of post sexual assault HIV infection; the  role of  advocacy for HIV counseling and assistance for victims related to HIV; the role and responsibility of the SANE for HIV PEP; and an ‘algorithm’ approach for the programs to use for HIV PEP.

Categories
DV/IPV Sexual Assault Testimony

Expert Witnesses

I’m in Boise, Idaho this week speaking at their 2 Days in June conference (with the fantastic Doug Miles, one of my favorite traveling companions). One of the topics we’re presenting is Using Experts in DV and Sexual Assault Cases.  I’ve actually written on the topic before, in a monograph for NDAA: The Role of Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners in the Prosecution of Domestic Violence Cases. My friend and new boss, Jennifer Long, formerly of NDAA, wrote a related monograph in that series: Introducing Expert Testimony to Explain Victim Behavior in Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Cases. You can download both of them (along with the rest of the monographs in that series) here. Yes, they’re written for lawyers, but I think there’s valuable info there for anyone working as an expert in these types of cases.

And if you’re attending 2 Days in June, please come by and say hello!

Categories
DV/IPV Sexual Assault

Intersection of HIV/AIDS & Violence Against Women

HRSA’s Maternal Child Health Bureau has an archived webinar on the intersection of HIV/AIDS and violence against women, originally presented last spring. You can view the offering with slides and audio, or download an MP3 to listen to on your iPod later on. There are also transcripts of the session available. These guys put on a great array of webinars–a lot of topics not being presented frequently that are truly clinically relevant. Now if they would just start offering CEs with them…

Categories
Child Abuse Sexual Assault

Child Maltreatment

The California Clinical Forensic Medical Training Center has recently posted 7 lectures with slides from the 23rd Annual San Diego International Conference on Child and Family Maltreatment, held this past January. If you weren’t able to get out to the conference, or you just didn’t get a chance to see everything you wanted to while you were there, here’s your chance. Lectures are $1 a piece to access (yup, one dollar–not a typo).

Categories
Articles of Note Child Abuse DV/IPV Sexual Assault

Articles of Note: June Edition

Time once again for a run down of some of the new and noteworthy articles in the current literature. Most of these are from the June/July issues; I have included a couple articles electronically available now in anticipation of print publication, as well (all from the last 4 weeks). As always, please keep in mind this in no way a comprehensive list; simply items that have caught my attention from a selection of peer-reviewed journals. All links lead to PubMed abstracts (unless there isn’t one for that article); from there you can choose what’s worth a.) paying for; b.) a pilgrimage to your nearest medical library;  or c.) downloading via the full-text access you possibly have at your disposal.

Categories
Child Abuse Sexual Assault Testimony

Child Abuse Evaluation & Treatment

If you have not yet perused this site, Child Abuse Evaluation & Treatment for Medical Providers is a virtual one-stop for all things on this subject. It’s essentially an e-book, with chapters that are well-organized and easy to read. The site is pretty accessible and plentiful links allow you to delve more deeply into subject matter as warranted. And if you’re helping to train police and prosecutors, some of the charts and outlines would be pretty useful for them, as well. My biggest complaint so far (because I’m still working my way through the site, and admittedly, it’s not my area of specialty) is that some of the resources are out of date (read: IAFN, which according to this link still has us in NJ), or just missing (like NSVRC).

Categories
Sexual Assault

Online Predators

A couple highlights from day 1 of the SANE-SART meeting: John Clune‘s stellar talk on high profile media cases; Tara Henry and Andre Rosay’s research on unconscious victims (PDF) (I only got to stay for half–such good stuff, though); and Dr. Sharon Cooper’s examination of child exploitation.

Categories
DV/IPV Sexual Assault

Inbox: Sexting, Pt. II

Looking through my inbox this morning, what do I find but an email alert from Medscape Emergency Medicine with a new article on sexting. This article has a decidedly healthcare bent to it, so I’m including it here. Sadly, there aren’t any CEs attached to it, but since we’ve so recently discussed the topic, I thought it would be a good follow-up.

Categories
Articles of Note Child Abuse DV/IPV Elder Abuse/Neglect Sexual Assault

Articles of Note: May Edition

Time once again for a run down of some of the new and noteworthy articles in the current literature. Most of these are from the May/June issues; I have included a couple articles electronically available now in anticipation of print publication, as well (all from the last 4 weeks). As always, please keep in mind this in no way a comprehensive list; simply items that have caught my attention from a selection of peer-reviewed journals. Most links lead to abstracts (unless otherwise indicated); from there you can choose what’s worth a.) paying for; b.) a pilgrimage to your nearest medical library;  or c.) downloading via the full-text access you possibly have at your disposal.

Categories
Sexual Assault

Sexting

ThrowUpInMyMouth_Web_Hero

[Callout Card from That’s Not Cool]

The Family Violence Prevention Fund has a relatively new page about sexting on their website, which in part discusses some of  the legal questions this activity raises. Sexting is essentially teens (often) sending text messages with sexual contact, and it seems like it’s received a flurry of media attention lately (you can check out major media outlet coverage here, here and here).

Categories
Child Abuse Sexual Assault

Child Sexual Abuse

Stop It Now is hosting a webinar about their new Online Help Center. The Center is described as “an interactive tool where adults can get private, 24/7 access to customized information and resources for preventing child sexual abuse”. The sessions (there are 2 dates) are scheduled to last an hour and are free of charge.