Domestic Violence Intervention
The premise of this report is that the author of this report has been given $300,000 over a three-year period to develop a community intervention. The steps involved in this report will include an identification of the problem, a listing of short-term goals, a list of long-term goals and a list of outcome objectives. There will also be the development of a community-based community participatory interdisciplinary plan that will be constructed to address the health gap issue over the next three years. There will be a number of concurrent tactics and approaches including a health fair, the incentives for attending the fair and other events, a media campaign that would work within the target community, a media celebrity or spokesman that is best suited for the task and financial rewards that will be allowed for when community leaders get involved. The report will conclude with the health policy development description. While domestic violence may not seem like a health problem in the traditional sense, it is absolute one when the depth and breadth of the facts are truly explored.
Details
As noted in the introduction, the health problem in question and the one that will be focused on is domestic violence. The rationale for the choice is pretty easy because domestic violence is something that hurts, maims, traumatizes and can even kill its victims. While the victims are usually women, this is not always the case. Indeed, men and even children can be victims as well, although child abuse is usually put in its own echelon for a couple of reasons (Mayo, 2015). Setting metrics for domestic violence is a bit tricky. Indeed, many women do not report domestic violence even when there is a clear-cut case of it and/or the victim’s life is clearly in danger. Many women suffer in silence, blame themselves and/or are too scared to reach out for help from family or, better yet, the police. Even with that, there are a number of goals that can be strived for. First, there needs to be an increase in the amount of incidents that are reported. Again, this is tricky because an actual increase could be an increase in reporting, an increase in the amount of incidents or a combination of both. However, the increase (or decrease) should be pretty consistent from year to year so the adjusted metric should be a twenty percent increase in reporting of domestic violence from the applicable population, that being Indians.
Of course, this is easier said than done as reporting of domestic violence would almost always entail getting the victim (usually a woman) and her kids to a safe place where there is a warm bed and food to eat. This could be a family member’s house but there are safe houses and shelters that can be used as well. The campaign involved will take on three main forms. First, there will be an ad campaign that asserts that physical violence or threats relating to the same are never OK. It will be clearly stated that it is abuse and should never be tolerated … not against women and not against kids. It should be made clear that women have a right and, in the case of children, an obligation to get to a safe place.
The target group, as noted before, will be the Indian population in the Mount Olive area. While there are obvious cultural differences and societal cues that come from the Indian culture, that does not make domestic violence acceptable and it should be made clear, to the women in particular, that they need to get themselves and their children away from a man that beats, threatens or otherwise harms them. Because the population in question is a minority one, any spokesperson (or spokespeople) should be Indian in their ancestry … the more recent the better. It might be best to have a woman and man each do separate spots to drive the point home that gender should not allow for domination and threats. An Indian man denouncing it would be great and an Indian woman saying that it is not acceptable would be great as well. Indeed, violence against women is quite prolific in the country of India and a lot of that spills into America when Indian people immigrate into the United States (BBC, 2014)
The big metric as far as whether the campaign is effective would be whether or not there is an uptick in Indian victims reporting domestic violence. Anonymous demographic data can be gathered to verify when an Indian person is involved, either the victim or the assailant (if not both). The victim needs to be assured that this is just being tracked for statistical purposes and that their name will not be attached to the tally in any way … just a single unit among others to track what is going on in the Indian population. A short-term goal would be to have a ten to twenty percent spike. A long-term goal would be to have that rate increase sustained to at least some degree over the three to five years after the campaign starts. If the results are good enough, there may be a plateauing at some point.
When it comes to the health policies that could or should come to pass as part of this campaign, one thing that should be made clear to all social service centers is that the treatment of Indian complainants and their families should be absolutely no different than it would be for anyone else. A white abuse victim, in other words, should get the same deference, respect and resources as an Indian victim (ACLU, 2015). The second regulation and policy change would be to make sure to have an Indian-speaker (or more than one, if possible) so that translation allows for fuller and more complete reports. Having a native speaker will probably ease the victim’s mind as well. This will all be presented on online mediums such as websites and social media but will also be distributed as flyers and such in areas where Indian people are often present.
Conclusion
Domestic violence is a scourge of all races, ages and peoples in general. However, any group (like many Indians) that have language, cultural or other differences from the common American way will lead to actions that should not happen and responses that are not what they should be, at least some of the time. It is a given that each culture has its own way of doing things and its own way of living. In many to most cases, that is not a big deal. However, abuse of any kind, even if it’s culturally accepted or expected in the country of ancestry, is never acceptable.
References
ACLU. (2015). Discrimination against Survivors of Domestic and Sexual Violence. American Civil Liberties Union. Retrieved 4 December 2015, from https://action.aclu.org/secure/discrimination-against-survivors-domestic-and-sexual-violence
BBC. (2014). India ‘fails’ victims of abuse. BBC News. Retrieved 4 December 2015, from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-29708612
Mayo. (2015). Domestic violence against men: Know the signs – Mayo Clinic. Mayoclinic.org. Retrieved 4 December 2015, from http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/domestic-violence-against-men/art-20045149
