Categories
Child Abuse Sexual Assault

How to Prevent Sexual Violence Against Children — 7 Days of Ideas

Here’s a cool-looking offering: Apolitical is offering a micro-course called How to Prevent Sexual Violence Against Children — 7 Days of Ideas. I know nothing about it beyond what’s on their site, but I am thoroughly intrigued:

On November 20, 1989, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child. 30 years on, major strides in children’s rights have been made, but the nature of sexual abuse and exploitation of children is evolving. Increasingly, abuse and exploitation are happening online — and often governments are ill-equipped to address these new threats.

We’ll walk you through practical approaches to addressing the issue, highlighting the most innovative tools, technologies and techniques which are working to prevent sexual violence against children. You’ll get:

  • Bite-sized activities or articles, taking 10 minutes or less per day, for 7 days
  • A practical introduction to evidence-based interventions for preventing child sexual violence – and how to apply it to your work
  • Global case studies and reading lists highlighting best practices and innovations in the field

You can complete as many or as few as you like, and you’ll have opportunities to connect with peers and experts applying these concepts globally.

To participate you must register by 15 November. See all the details here.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
DV/IPV

How State/Territory, Tribal, and Federal Health Policies Can Promote Survivor Health, Preserve Autonomy, and Protect Confidentiality

This is a very last minute post, but, it’s worth it for two reasons–so please keep reading. Futures Without Violence has a webinar tomorrow, October 30th at 1pm ET, How State/Territory, Tribal, and Federal Health Policies Can Promote Survivor Health, Preserve Autonomy, and Protect Confidentiality. It will be archived, so no worries if you cannot attend with so little notice. From the website:

Health and insurance policies at the state/territory, tribal, and federal level have the potential to promote health, preserve autonomy, and protect confidentiality for survivors of domestic violence and state/territory policymakers have an opportunity to build on federal policies for further protections for survivors. In addition, health care providers can play an important role in addressing survivors’ health, and providing a warm referral to a domestic violence agency but sometimes lack of clarity about existing laws and policies prevent them from doing so. While laws and policies vary state to state, most U.S. states have enacted mandatory reporting laws, which require the reporting of specified injuries and wounds (i.e. gunshot and knife wounds), and very few have mandated reporting laws specific to suspected abuse or domestic violence for individuals being treated by a health care professional. During this webinar we will sharing our updated compendium on these policies (see below) and hear from key partners who’ve worked to clarify laws and policies and where needed create reporting exceptions for domestic violence survivors, to ensure that patients have knowledge of appropriate resources for intervention, safety, and access to health care.

This webinar will also launch our newly updated resource, The Compendium of State/Territory Statutes and Policies on Domestic Violence and Health Care, an at-a-glance summary of state and U.S. territory laws, regulations, and other activities relevant to addressing domestic violence in health care settings. Also newly updated, Insurance Discrimination Against Victims of Domestic Violence (PDF report): authored by webinar speakers Terry L. Fromson, and Nancy Durborow, highlights the discriminatory practices of some insurance companies that penalize domestic violence victims who seek coverage and the recent changes to state and federal law. We will also hear a case example from Colorado in repealing a mandatory reporting law and putting in place legislation which better supports survivors and their health. Futures Without Violence has these tools available for professionals to best serve their clients and patients.

Those links in the description above are the other reason I wanted to post this session–particularly the new Compendium. It’s definitely a worthwhile resource to have for forensic healthcare clinicians of all stripes.

Register for the session here.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Sexual Assault

Medical-Forensic Exam Payment Webinar Series from IAFN

A very excellent webinar series is coming up, courtesy of IAFN’s new medical-forensic exam billing and payment project. There are three, the first of which will be November 26, 2019 at 12pm ET: When Things Don’t Go Right: Sexual Assault Exam Billing and Payment – It’s TIME for Change! From the website: Come be apart of the solution: 10+ years post VAWA, barriers exist for victims who were guaranteed free exams, including being billed for exams and being pursued by debt collection agencies. 

Following that:

nPEP Costs HOW MUCH for the Sexual Assault Patient? December 3, 2019 at 2:30pm ET (Description: The National SAFE Protocol and the CDC recommend that every sexual assault patient be evaluated for HIV risk. However, nurse examiners are often unaware of the actual cost of HIV nPEP, and options for providing nPEP which can affect patient access to medications that may be lifesaving. At the conclusion of this webinar and with the help of four-panel members from three different states and the District of Columbia, the participants will be able to identify the current recommended guidelines for the administration of HIV nPEP to patients in the acute phase post-sexual assault. They will be able to recognize the estimated cost for HIV nPEP, articulate various HIV nPEP billing and payment coverage options, and describe various gaps in HIV nPEP coverage for sexual assault patients across the nation.)

Billing and Coding 101: Learn the Anatomy of Billing and Coding for Sexual Assault Patients like a Pro. December 19, 2019 at 2pm ET (Description: SANE program managers and hospital billing departments are unprepared to properly code requests for payment to state-designated payers for the sexual assault medical forensic examinations which can result in payment denials and patients potentially receiving bills for service, violating VAWA. With the guidance from Shelley Voci, a coding specialist, at the conclusion of this webinar, the participants will be to articulate the history of ICD-10-CM, as well as identify and describe common ICD-10-CM for sexual assault patients, and interpret an example bill for services rendered status post-sexual assault medical forensic examination.)

CEs will be available for IAFN members. The sessions will be archived, in case you can’t make the live session. Register for all the webinars here.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
DV/IPV

Strangulation and Imaging–New Research

Last Week’s Articles of Note contained a new study that I want to highlight: Evaluation of Nonfatal Strangulation in Alert Adults. Along with CT angiograms of the neck in strangulation victims: Incidence of positive findings at a level one trauma center over a 7-year period it represents new research that challenges some of the thinking about our response to strangulation patients. Specifically the notion that we should be ordering some type of imaging (e.g. CT angio) on everyone.

This is not to say you should abandon your current protocols, or stop imaging strangulation patients altogether (please don’t do that), but once again, I’d like to point out that there is no evidence base, regardless of what anyone claims, supporting routine imaging of every strangulation patient. And in fact, there are problems with that approach:

  1. Cost, obviously–at least here in the US, assuming people have insurance that will cover it or that it will be paid for by crime victims compensation funds assumes *a lot* about people, their situations, their safety, their willingness to work with law enforcement, and the immense variations in hospital billing practices across the country.
  2. Unnecessary exposure to radiation–particularly to an area of the body that is very sensitive to radiation (for example, please consider the impact of radiation on the thyroid, even more so for pediatric patients).

The bottom line is we should be having thoughtful conversations at the local and national level about how to approach these patients; we should be working toward funding more research to create a more substantial evidence base to establish clinical protocols; we should be disseminating existing research widely as it becomes available and talking about what it does (and doesn’t) mean for our practices; we should be developing a national protocol on the assessment and treatment of strangulation patients similar to what we have for sexual assault; and we definitely should be cautious about claiming anything is a best practice or gold standard without actual scientific support.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Uncategorized

Since Last We Spoke, 10-21-19

Good morning from Michigan State University, where I am working for most of the week. Happily, I am home the remainder of the month after this trip, so a bit of a travel reprieve, although not a work one (not a complaint). Thanks to those of you who participated in Journal Club, but it was not enough to sustain the amount of effort it requires for me to prep, monitor and sustain the process, so I have discontinued it and removed the posts (leaving them lingering half-finished felt–well, unfinished). I tried, people–it’s up to you in your own jurisdictions to make it happen, because clearly doing it online is not working. We tried.

It’s a heavy writing week month for me, so I am surfing less and researching more. But there were a few things that caught my eye since last we spoke:

The physical impact of racism

Traumatic stress linked to stroke

The financial cost of domestic violence

An excellent conversation between Morgan Jerkins and MeToo Founder Tarana Burke

What a loss to our country–I hope to be able to pay my respects on Thursday

We don’t pay teachers enough

Your feel-good story to start your week off right

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Articles of Note Child Abuse DV/IPV Elder Abuse/Neglect Sexual Assault Testimony

Articles of Note: October 2019 Edition

It’s time once again for Articles of Note, our monthly romp through the newly published peer-reviewed literature. There is *a lot* of choice material to sort through this month, so I hope you will spend some quality time with the list. As always, links lead to PubMed abstracts.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Child Abuse Sexual Assault

2018 STD Surveillance Report

(1st week of Journal Club is live, so feel free to jump in; we’ll pose new questions each Tuesday.)

The CDC just released its 2018 STD Surveillance Report and it is grim. They’re reporting increases in chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis (including congenital syphilis, which is up 185% since 2014). Helpful to know as you are considering what services to provide, including testing vs presumptive treating, medication choices, etc. As always, consult your local health department as well to get an accurate picture of the incidence and prevalence in your own community.

Read the full report here.

Table of contents if you want to jump around or are interested in specific data.

Here are your state ranking tables.

And for those of you looking for PPT slides, you can find the full downloadable list here.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Uncategorized

Since Last We Spoke, 10-7-19

[There’s still time to join us for our first Journal Club–get all the details here.]

I am happily at home and looking forward to what should be a great week here at FHO headquarters. We will kick off Journal Club tomorrow (and keep it going each Tuesday for 6ish weeks depending on how things go). Plus, tomorrow night is Kol Nidre, my favorite service of the year, leading off Yom Kippur, a day of fasting and reflection for my people. In our household it will be concluded by breaking the fast with friends–please note there will be no post on Wednesday in honor of the holiday.

I tried very hard to do almost no work whatsoever this weekend, and focused on being unplugged for much of it. Still, there were a few things that caught my eye since last we spoke:

Reproductive coercion continues to be a lesser discussed form of intimate partner violence; glad it’s getting some mainstream attention here

Related.

What if your abusive husband is a cop?

Facing history for the future of nursing

More voices coming forward

I loved this piece on soulmates

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
DV/IPV

Domestic Violence High-Risk Teams

[There’s still time to join us for our first Journal Club–get all the details here.]

OVC TTAC is hosting an Expert Q&A on October 16th focusing on domestic violence high-risk teams. The session will be held from 2-3:15pm ET. From the website:

The Domestic Violence High-Risk Team (DVHRT) Model was born from one community’s tragedy and has gone on to national recognition and replication as a leading strategy for intimate partner homicide prevention. This presentation will provide a comprehensive understanding of the DVHRT Model, with an overview of the research at its foundation, and include a discussion on the function and structure of key partners in this multidisciplinary approach. Participants will learn how team members work together to identify high-risk cases and mobilize risk management strategies.

The session will be recorded for those of you who cannot participate live.

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.

Categories
Child Abuse

WHO Guidelines for the Health Sector Response to Child Maltreatment

[There’s still time to join us for our first Journal Club–get all the details here.]

WHO has a new guideline for the health sector response to child maltreatment. From the site:

Every year up to 1 billion children experience physical, sexual or psychological violence. These new WHO guidelines aim to help frontline healthcare providers to recognize children who have suffered from violence and neglect and provide evidence-based first line support. Specifically, the guidelines focus on:

  • Identification of children who are exposed to abuse or neglect
  • Supportive communication with children suspected to be victims of abuse or neglect
  • Assessing and addressing the safety of the child
  • Interacting with caregivers in suspected cases of child maltreatment
  • Providing immediate medical and psychosocial support for children exposed to child maltreatment
  • Collecting medical history, conducting physical exams and appropriate documentation of findings

These new guidelines complement Responding to children and adolescents who have been sexually abused: WHO clinical guidelines which were published in 2017.

Download the full report here (PDF).

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Have you checked out the FHO store lately? You can find the newest research brief, Applying The Strangulation Research To Expert Testimony In Cases With Adult Victims. Or purchase the complete set of three (Strangulation, Aging Bruises, and Consensual Sex Injury) for a special price.