Globally, between 15-71 percent of women will experience physical and/or sexual abuse from an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime. Too often this preventable form of violence is repetitive in nature, occurring at multiple points across the lifespan. The prevalence of intimate partner violence is on the higher end of this spectrum in East Africa, with in-country demographic and health surveys indicating that approximately half of all women between the ages of 15-49 in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania having experienced physical or sexual abuse within a partnership. It is now widely accepted that preventing intimate partner violence is possible and can be achieved through a greater understanding of the problem; its risk and protective factors; and effective evidence-informed primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. To that end, on August 11-12, 2014, the Institute of Medicine's Forum on Global Violence Prevention, in a collaborative partnership with the Uganda National Academy of Sciences, convened a workshop focused on informing and creating synergies within a diverse community of researchers, health workers, and decision makers committed to promoting intimate partner violence-prevention efforts that are innovative, evidence-based, and crosscutting. This workshop brought together a variety of stakeholders and community workers from Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania to engage in a meaningful, multidirectional dialogue regarding intimate partner violence in the region. Preventing Intimate Partner Violence in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania summarizes the presentations and discussion of the workshop.

Worldwide, patterns of violence against women differ markedly from violence against men. For example, women are more likely than men to be sexually assaulted or killed by someone they know. The United Nations has defined violence against women as "gender-based" violence, to acknowledge that such violence is rooted in gender inequality and is often tolerated and condoned by laws, institutions, and community norms. Violence against women is not only a profound violation of human rights, but also a costly impediment to a country's national development. While gender-based violence occurs in many forms throughout the life cycle, this review focuses on two of the most common types-physical intimate partner violence and sexual violence by any perpetrator. Unfortunately, the knowledge base about effective initiatives to prevent and respond to gender-based violence is relatively limited. Few approaches have been rigorously evaluated, even in high-income countries. And such evaluations involve numerous methodological challenges. Nonetheless, the authors review what is known about more and less effective-or at least promising-approaches to prevent and respond to gender-based violence. They present definitions, recent statistics, health consequences, costs, and risk factors of gender-based violence. The authors analyze good practice initiatives in the justice, health, and education sectors, as well as multisectoral approaches. For each of these sectors, they examine initiatives that have addressed laws and policies, institutional reforms, community mobilization, and individual behavior change strategies. Finally, the authors identify priorities for future research and action, including funding research on the health and socioeconomic costs of violence against women, encouraging science-based program evaluations, disseminating evaluation results across countries, promoting investment in effective prevention and treatment initiatives, and encouraging public-private partnerships.

Over the past 25 years, developing coordinated responses to intimate partner violence and sexual violence has improved both perpetrator accountability, and victim safety and self-determination. However, preventing intimate partner violence and sexual violence from occurring is beyond the ability of any one type of organization. Preventing this violence requires a network of individuals, groups and organizations who coordinate and assess their efforts on an ongoing basis. This volume provides theoretical and practical guidance for the development of state and local prevention systems that hold the potential to eliminate persistent social problems. The development of prevention systems was informed by the data-driven public health model, systems theory and the ecological systems perspective. Strengthening Systems to Prevent Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence offers guidance on how to gain participation of the right partners in developing a prevention system, and how to focus the work of that system on the critical areas of planning, implementation and capacity building. The guidance, resources and experience shared in this important collection will be invaluable to all those working towards the prevention of intimate partner violence and sexual violence. This book is based on a special issue of the Journal of Family Social Work.