13 May 2020Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) is experienced by about 1/3 of women globally and remains a major health concern worldwide.
IRIS (Identification and Referral to Improve Safety of women affected by DVA) is a complex, system-level training and support programme, designed to improve the primary healthcare response to DVA. Since 2011, following a successful trial in England, IRIS has been implemented in eleven London boroughs.
In two boroughs the service was disrupted temporarily. The study, published in BMC Health Services Research, evaluated the impact of that service disruption, and found that disrupting the IRIS service substantially reduced the rate of referrals to DVA service providers. Our findings demonstrate that continuous funding and staffing of IRIS as a system level programme is needed.
The study was led by Dr Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths from the Department of Applied Health Research at University College London (UCL) and Dr Alex Sohal from Queen Mary University London (QMUL), in collaboration with ARC North Thames' Professor Chris Griffiths and a team from UCL, QMUL, Oxford University, the Centre for Academic Primary Care (CAPC) at University of Bristol and social enterprise IRISi.
Full publication: Disruption of a primary health care domestic violence and abuse service in two London boroughs: interrupted time series evaluation (BMC Health Services Research, June 2020).
