Increasing awareness about teens experiencing abuse in dating relationships was reflected in the extensive coverage of this topic at the Fifth National Conference on Health and Domestic Violence. In addition to pre-conference and plenary sessions, there was a wide range of workshops on dating violence providing new information on data collection, innovative practices, resources, and evaluation. The need to reach youth during the middle school years or earlier was a consistent theme throughout the conference.

In this plenary session, leading experts in the fields of domestic violence, poverty, substance abuse, and mental health examined the intersections between co-occurring issues and offered strategies for developing a more trauma-informed, integrated health care response. To achieve this goal, the health care paradigm must shift toward patient-centered care that meets the individual needs of each patient by allowing their own values to guide decisions about their health care. Central themes to this approach are choice, control, and making connections between these issues to provide health care that is timely, efficient, and equitable.

A wave of inspiration and hope was ignited during a poster session and presentation on Pigs for Peace. Through an economic empowerment strategy that costs as little as $10 for a donor to buy a share of a pig, Dr. Nancy Glass is helping women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire).

The findings from rigorous evaluation studies that were presented at the Fifth National Conference on Health and Domestic Violence signaled significant progress in addressing gaps in our knowledge and advancing the research agenda on domestic violence. Presentations on studies using randomized controlled trial and quasi-experimental study designs included:

Domestic Violence Enhanced Home Visitation Project (DOVE)

Drs. Phyllis Sharps and Linda Bullock are conducting a randomized controlled trial of a community nurse home visitation program that is designed to reduce intimate partner violence (IPV) against pregnant women. The study population is pregnant women currently experiencing IPV. The intervention group receives three prenatal and three postpartum home visits by a community health nurse. These services are being evaluated in urban and rural settings using home visitors with a variety of educational backgrounds including a small sample of subjects participating in the Family Nurse Partnership program. Research follow-up of mothers and infants will continue until the infant is two years old.

The Fifth National Conference on Health and Domestic Violence closed with a plenary session on prevention. The moderator, Dr. James Mercy with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced that the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Surveillance System (NISVSS) will begin collecting data with a random-digit-dial telephone survey in fall, 2009. The NISVSS will provide national- and state-level data that will help to inform prevention efforts.