BACKGROUND: Since 2013, approximately 4400 women have been murdered by their partners in South Africa. This is five times higher than the per capita global average. Domestic violence is known to be cyclical, endemic and frequently involves multiple victims. It also becomes progressively more dangerous over time and may lead to fatalities. In 2012, the Health Professions Council of South Africa released a domestic violence protocol for emergency service providers. This protocol, or screening guidelines, includes assessing future risk to domestic violence, providing physical and psychosocial care, documentation of evidence of abuse and informing patients of their rights and the services available to them. The extent to which these guidelines have been circulated and implemented, particularly by general health care practitioners (HCPs), is unknown.
OBJECTIVE: We review international treaties to which South Africa is a signatory, as well as national legislation and policies that reinforce the right to care for victims of domestic violence, to delineate the implication of these laws and policies for HCPs.
METHODS: We reviewed literature and analysed national and international legislation and policies.
RESULTS: The \'norms\' contained in existing guidelines and currently practiced in an ad hoc manner are not only compatible with existing statutory duties of HCPs but are in fact a natural extension of them.
CONCLUSIONS: Proactive interventions such as the use of guidelines for working with victims of domestic violence enable suspected cases of domestic violence to be systematically identified, appropriately managed, properly referred, and should be adopted by all South African HCPs.

Prenatal health care counseling is associated with positive health outcomes for mothers and infants. Moreover, pregnant women are considered a vulnerable population at risk of being victims of intimate partner violence. Pregnancy provides a unique opportunity to identify and refer women experiencing intimate partner violence to community resources; however, in prior research, most women reported that their prenatal care providers did not talk to them about intimate partner violence. Given the importance for providers to offer prenatal health care counseling on intimate partner violence, it is concerning that there is scant knowledge on Asian, Native Hawaiian, and other Pacific Islander mothers\' experiences in this area. The study\'s objectives were (a) to determine the proportion of mothers who received prenatal health care counseling on intimate partner violence; and, (b) to examine racial differences of those who received prenatal health care counseling on intimate partner violence. Hawai\'i\'s Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) data from 2004-08 were analyzed for 8,120 mothers with information on receipt of intimate partner violence prenatal health care counseling. Overall, 47.7% of mothers were counseled on intimate partner violence. Compared to Whites, Native Hawaiians, Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans were significantly less likely to report receiving prenatal health care counseling in intimate partner violence, but the opposite association was observed for Samoans. Intimate partner violence continues to be a significant problem for women, thus, this study\'s findings may be used as important baseline data to measure the progress made given the implementation of the new Guidelines for Women\'s Preventive Services in intimate partner violence screening and counseling.

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BACKGROUND: Intimate partner violence (IPV) and child maltreatment (CM) are major global public health problems. The Preventing Violence Across the Lifespan (PreVAiL) Research Network, an international group of over 60 researchers and national and international knowledge-user partners in CM and IPV, sought to identify evidence-based research priorities in IPV and CM, with a focus on resilience, using a modified Delphi consensus development process.
METHODS: Review of existing empirical evidence, PreVAiL documents and team discussion identified a starting list of 20 priorities in the following categories: resilience to violence exposure (RES), CM, and IPV, as well as priorities that cross-cut the content areas (CC), and others specific to research methodologies (RM) in violence research. PreVAiL members (N = 47) completed two online survey rounds, and one round of discussions via three teleconference calls to rate, rank and refine research priorities.
RESULTS: Research priorities were: to examine key elements of promising or successful programmes in RES/CM/IPV to build intervention pilot work; CC: to integrate violence questions into national and international surveys, and RM: to investigate methods for collecting and collating datasets to link data and to conduct pooled, meta and sub-group analyses to identify promising interventions for particular groups.
CONCLUSIONS: These evidence-based research priorities, developed by an international team of violence, gender and mental health researchers and knowledge-user partners, are of relevance for prevention and resilience-oriented research in the areas of IPV and CM.

BACKGROUND: This population-based study investigated the different forms, magnitude and risk factors of men\'s violence against women in intimate relationships in a rural part of northern Vietnam and whether a difference in risk factors were at hand for the different forms of violence. Vietnam has undergone a rapid transition in the last 20 years, moving towards a more equal situation for men and women however, Confucian doctrine is still strong and little is known about men\'s violence against women within the Vietnamese family.
METHODS: This is a cross-sectional population-based study that used a questionnaire developed by the World Health Organisation for investigating women\'s health and violence against women in different settings. Face-to face structured interviewing was performed and 883 married women, aged 17 to 60 participated. Bi- and multivariate analyses was used for risk factor assessment.
RESULTS: The lifetime prevalence of physical violence was 30.9 percent and past year prevalence was 8.3 per cent, while the corresponding figures for physical and sexual violence combined was 32.7 and 9.2 percent. The lifetime prevalence was highest for psychological abuse (27.9 percent) as a single entity. In most cases the violence was of a severe nature and exercised as repeated acts over time. Woman\'s low educational level, husband\'s low education, low household income and the husband having more than one wife/partner were risk factors for lifetime and past year physical/sexual violence. The pattern of factors associated with psychological abuse alone was however different. Husband\'s low professional status and women\'s intermediate level of education appeared as risk factors.
CONCLUSIONS: Men\'s violence against women in intimate relationships is commonly occurring in rural Vietnam. There is an obvious need of preventive and treatment activities. Our findings point at that pure psychological abuse is different from physical/sexual violence in terms of differing characteristics of the perpetrators and it might be that also different strategies are needed to reduce and prevent this violence.

OBJECTIVE: to develop an evidenced-based, women-centred care clinical guideline designed to assist midwives and other health-care providers in Japanese hospitals, clinics and midwifery offices, in identifying and supporting potential or actual perinatal victims of domestic violence.
METHODS: systematic review and critical appraisal of extant research; structured assessment of clinical guideline development.
METHODS: systematic and comprehensive literature search. Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE) was used to assess the guideline development for purposes of assuring methodological quality.
RESULTS: electronic searches of medical and nursing databases between February and December 2003 retrieved 2392 articles. Selected as evidence were 157 articles yielding 28 recommendations aligned to clinical assessment questions.
CONCLUSIONS: using expert consensus and external reviews, recommendations were generated that provided the at-risk perinatal group with the best possible practice available to prevent further harm.
CONCLUSIONS: the evidenced-based clinical guideline fosters a supportive environment for educating health-care providers on domestic violence, and to improve clinic access for at-risk perinatal women. Information on domestic violence and a negotiated midwife-client safety plan can be initiated for potential or actual victims of domestic violence, and is achieved through understanding the risks of the woman and her fetus or baby, while respecting the woman\'s intention.

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Spouse abuse is a major social issue in our country. Based on national samples, between 10 and 20% of couples report some type of violence during the course of their marriage. In the United States, 1.8 million women are physically abused by their spouses each year. Within the military, it is estimated that the incidence of spouse abuse is even greater than in the civilian sector. Estimates suggest that one-third of military spouses experience abuse during their marriage. Although 87% of women prefer discussing their victimization with their physician, physicians, as a group, have been least effective in helping them. Recently, several barriers to physician recognition and intervention in domestic violence have been identified, and recommendations for specific training on abuse have been published. This paper provides military physicians an in-depth review of the guidelines to identification, diagnosis, and management of spouse abuse, with a special emphasis on their implementation within the uniformed services.

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