Planning for the CONNECT study: Integrating family planning into community services for women experiencing intimate partner violence
Abortion, Contraception
Awarded 2015
Interdisciplinary Innovation (Phase 1) Grants
Wendy V. Norman, MD, MHSc
University of British Columbia
$25,000

Objective: We aim to host planning activities engaging key interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral collaborators to design innovative research on the effectiveness of family planning interventions to reduce reproductive coercion and intimate partner violence (IPV). We will expand our extensive partnerships with Canadian health system leaders, clinicians, community organizations, and researchers to develop a national family planning intervention trial to answer the question: “Among women who have experienced IPV, will interventions to assist the achievement of their personal reproductive goals result in a reduction in IPV within the subsequent two years?” The planning activities will inform the study design. As a starting point we will consider a multi-site randomized controlled trial in Canada engaging women from community settings who have experienced IPV, and connecting them to high quality family planning knowledge, methods, and services. Key innovations include: the organized connection between community and health settings; the potential to link participant data (experiences, preferences, social determinants of health) to single- payer government health administrative databases supporting universal follow up for health system events; a health economic analysis; and the potential to determine and validate models identifying potential IPV through patterns in health administrative data.