Identifying Facilitators of Coordinated Care for BIPOC Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence: Formative Research Towards Intervention Development


Principal Investigator:

Dabney P Evans, PhD, MPH | Emory University, Rollins School of Public Health

Co-Investigators:

Athena Sherman, PhD, PhN, RN | Emory University, Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing

Subasri Narasimhan, PhD, MPH | Emory University, Rollins School of Public Health

Why is this project important?

While barriers to intimate partner violence (IPV) care are well documented, this research aims to fill gaps in knowledge about successful transitions for IP survivors with the objective of standardizing IPV coordinated care in the safety-net healthcare setting. To fully integrate IV coordinated care into the hospital workflow, we need to identify the facilitators of coordinated care, allowing us to access the levers of change to create a reliable system of care coordination that is feasible, viable and, importantly, acceptable to key stakeholders, namely, hospital and CBO staff, and IPV survivors, particularly those that identify as BIPOC.

Key Contribution to Science

This work will fill a gap in knowledge about facilitators of IPV coordinated care, setting the stage for intervention testing via an NIH R01 proposal. The hybrid use of Intervention Mapping and community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches is not only novel, but also necessary to ensure that the future intervention will be tailored to stakeholder needs, maximizing the likelihood that IPV survivors are safe and uptake services beyond hospital discharge.

Coordinated care, the process of identifying at-risk individuals and connecting them with health and social services at the point of care, is an important evidence-based approach for optimizing service connection and retention among individuals at highest risk for poor health outcomes. Survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV)—a group with complex needs—would likely benefit from such care; while IPV coordinated care has been theorized it has not to date been operationalized. The purpose of this study is to identify the facilitators of coordinated care allowing us to access the levers of change to create a reliable system of care coordination that is feasible, viable and, acceptable to all stakeholders, including BIPOC IPV survivors, hospital, and community-based organization staff.

  1. Characterize facilitators and levers of change to inform intervention development for coordinated care in the ED setting for BIPOC IPV survivors.
  2. Using a CBPR-informed co-creation process, generate intervention themes, components, scope, and sequence via focus group discussions.
  3. In collaboration with a community advisory board (CAB), validate the logic model of change and final intervention design.