VISION

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.

Professor Gene Feder

Professor of Primary Care

Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol

Gene Feder is a clinical academic and GP whose research addressed inequalities in cardiovascular, diabetes and respiratory care before focusing on the epidemiology and health care response to domestic violence and abuse (DVA). His research group carried out the first epidemiological study of DVA in primary care, landmark systematic reviews (DVA screening, advocacy and survivors’ expectations of clinicians) and randomised controlled trials of DVA interventions, particularly the landmark IRIS trial which has been scaled up into a national programme. He has been chief investigator on National Institute of Health Research applied research programmes on DVA, integrating epidemiological studies with trials, economic analysis and nested qualitative studies. He has led MRC Global Challenges and NIHR Global Health groups, developing and evaluating health care responses to violence against women in Brazil, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and the occupied Palestinian territories. He has chaired 4 NICE clinical guidelines including Domestic violence and abuse, as well as the WHO Intimate partner and sexual violence guidelines. He chairs the UK Inter-Collegiate And Domestic Violence Agency (INCADVA) forum and in 2017 was awarded an OBE for services to health care and victims of domestic abuse.

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.

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, NHS Digital, 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, and the National Police Chief’s Council lead for violence and vulnerability.