Violence, Health and Society
UKPRP award £7.1 million for 5 years, with additional in-kind investment from the consortium’s partners
The Violence, Health and Society Consortium (VISION) aims to reduce the violence that harms health by improving the measurement and analysis of data on violence.
Our research
Improving the data needed to develop better interventions to reduce violence and thereby improve health is the aim of the Violence, Health and Society Consortium. Improving and integrating fragmented data with a shared framework is core to our work. Better and more integrated data will be used to test and develop theory and to assess which interventions are more effective. Violence causes harms to health: by helping to reduce violence, the Consortium reduces health inequalities and improves the health of the population. We have special interest in domestic and sexual violence, which are neglected in the evidence base despite public concern. We are developing cooperation between academics and practitioners, Universities and policy makers, data providers and data users. The Consortium will: 1. Develop a theory of change of violence, health and society applying a complex systems approach. 2. Improve measurement by applying and developing a measurement framework for violence and abuse to enable system-wide collaboration, across disciplines and practitioner communities, and to overcome existing fragmentation. 3. Integrate and link data from multiple sources. 4. Investigate causal pathways between violence, health and society, including those associated with inequalities including gender. 5. Evaluate the cost-effectiveness of intervention systems.
Resources
The Violence, Health and Society Consortium (VISION) – The VISION website is an excellent resource for those working in violence prevention. There are publications, policy briefings, and blogs with key research findings relevant to practitioners, police, those working in domestic violence and sexual abuse (DVSA) specialist services, analysts, academics and local and central government staff. The entire site provides insight that can deepen understanding, improve measurement, and provide actionable solutions to address violence and the associated health inequalities.
Publications & Events– Explore our research findings, publications, policy briefings, presentations, blogs, and events. The page is easy to use and discover research findings and policy recommendations to supplement violence prevention thinking and work.
Evidence Syntheses – We are synthesising evidence on violence and abuse and have produced systematic, scoping, and rapid evidence reviews. This page highlights 12 peer-reviewed research such as the employment consequences of intimate partner violence, Black and minoritized women’s experiences of DVSA services in the UK, adolescent domestic abuse (teenage relationship abuse), and the prevalence of physical violence against people in insecure migration status.
Sexual Violence and Abuse Cost Estimate tool – VISION, the Women’s Budget Group, and Rape Crisis England & Wales collaborated to create a tool that estimates the lifetime costs of sexual violence and abuse (SVA) in children and adults by national population and local area in England and Wales. The impacts of SVA are often long-term resulting in substantial lifetime costs, and this first-of-its-kind costing calculator offers a realistic reflection of the long-term burden of SVA borne by both survivors and society.
Animation on Lived Experience of Violence and Trauma – Incorporating the voices of those who have experienced and those who have caused violence is a key aspect of VISION. We partnered with the Violence, Abuse and Mental Health Network (VAMHN) and SafeLives to communicate what lived experience (LE) involvement means in violence-related research. We decided on an animation focussing on what working with those with LE of violence and trauma looks like in practice. The animation introduces the concept of LE and how it can be embedded in violence prevention research.
The European Conference on Gender and Violence 2026 annual conference – ENGV is an interdisciplinary, international network supporting exchange and collaboration about gender and violence among researchers, scholars, and professionals. Their annual conference provides a forum for friendly debate of current research. VISION researchers have been attending the conferences over the years, and we are excited to organise and host this year’s event at City St George’s University of London.
Director
Deputy Directors
Consortium members
VISION, Violence, Health and Society, engages:
- Co-investigators with expertise across the social and health sciences, in Sociology, Public Health, Primary Care, Criminology, Psychiatry, Security, Gender Studies, Economics, Law, Political Science, Computer Science, Social Statistics, Epidemiology, Health Informatics, and Public Policy
- Providers of data on violence, including Office for National Statistics, Public Health Wales, Women’s Aid, Refuge, Safe Lives, Rape Crisis, Imkaan, Respect, Lancashire Constabulary, and National Centre for Domestic Violence.
- Users of data on violence, including the Department for Health and Social Care, Home Office, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Commissioner for Domestic Abuse, Commissioner for Victims, Commissioner for Anti-Slavery, Public Health England, the National Police Chief’s Council lead for violence and vulnerability, and the Violence, Abuse and Mental Health Network.
Leslie Humphreys
Senior Lecturer in Criminal Justice and Policing, School of Law and Policing
Alexandria Innes
Senior Lecturer in International Politics, Violence and Society Centre
Leonie Tanczer
Associate Professor in International Security and Emerging Technologies
