| Session Title: The Healthy Relationships Approach in Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Prevention: Turning Practice Into Evidence |
| Multipaper Session 562 to be held in Conference Room 14 on Friday, Nov 4, 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM |
| Sponsored by the Collaborative, Participatory & Empowerment Evaluation TIG |
| Chair(s): |
| Cathleen Crain, LTG Associates, partners@ltgassociates.com |
| Discussant(s): |
| Laura Leviton, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, llevito@rwjf.org |
| Abstract: This panel, based on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Strengthening What Works: Preventing Intimate Partner Violence in Immigrant and Refugee Communities (SWW) initiative, explores the evaluation of eight intimate partner violence (IPV) prevention projects in immigrant and refugee communities. The first presentation argues that this initiative represents an opportunity to build community-based collaborations in which the relationship between evidence-based practice and practice-based evidence becomes complementary. We propose to do this by means of "Learning Collaboratives" in which grantee organizations work together to formulate questions, test models, analyze data, and potentially reshape the field of IPV prevention. The second presentation explores SWW grantee efforts to build and evaluate healthy relationship education for refugee and immigrant populations. We describe the trajectories that brought the grantees to healthy relationship education and the associated evaluation challenges. The third presentation explores the hypothesis that healthy relationship education is a primary prevention response that will address some forms of violence but not all. |
| Closing the Research Gap in IPV Prevention: Turning Practice Into Evidence Using Community-based Learning Collaboratives |
| Alberto Bouroncle, LTG Associates, abouroncle@ltgassociates.com |
| To expand the knowledge of effective IPV prevention, methods should be developed to evaluate community level interventions that have not been tested systematically, shifting the paradigm from evidence-based practice to practice-based evidence. Practitioners at the community level, organized around Learning Collaboratives, will be able to work together and collect data to generate research questions that may influence research agendas and policy making. The RWJF's Strengthening What Works (SWW) will provide a testing ground for the development of Learning Collaboratives addressing the prevention of IPV in immigrant and refugee communities. The wide range of SWW prevention strategies suggests that grantees will be leading these Learning Collaboratives focusing on issues such as the role of culture and language, working with youth using healthy relationship models, working with men using a popular education approach, or working with the LGBTQ community in issues of IPV prevention. |
| Healthy Relationship Curricula for Immigrants and Refugees: Practice and Evidence |
| Greta Uehling, LTG Associates, guehling@ltgassociates.com |
| All of the RWJF Strengthening What Works grantees are currently creating, revising, and implementing curricula that include material on healthy relationships. Many of them have taken this approach as a way of bypassing the stigma associated with IPV and offering project participants knowledge and skills that contribute to the primary prevention of IPV. Evaluating healthy relationship curricula for refugees and immigrants presents a number of challenges. First, how do we account for the immense effect that different facilitators bring to curriculum implementation? Second, what evaluation tools can best overcome formidable barriers of language and literacy to bring promising practice to evidence? Finally, grantees have adapted mainstream material to fit specific target populations. How do we evaluate the extent of that fit considering that the target is continually shifting, and will these curricula be effective with other populations? |
| What Does Healthy Relationship Education Prevent? Prevention and Typologies of Intimate Partner Violence |
| Carter Roeber, LTG Associates, croeber@ltgassociates.com |
| Formative evaluation often requires evaluators to raise questions and conduct new research that looks at an issue from a new perspective. In order to prevent IPV, grantees in Strengthening What Works (SWW) have developed practical responses for teaching people about healthy relationships. In order to assist SWW grantees build their own evaluation capacity and to evaluate their work, LTG is exploring the connections between healthy relationships and IPV prevention more thoroughly. One key issue to explore is whether the curricula and training in healthy relationships can prevent the serious kinds of IPV that require the most attention and services or if they will have a more general effect on the quality of life for couples and communities. We hypothesize that healthy relationship curricula can be effective primary prevention, but they will not prevent more devastating coercive controlling relationships. |