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Student Receives 2025 Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellowship

Pediatricians Must Take Action for Adolescents Experiencing Intimate Partner Violence.

April 18, 2019
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Doctor explaining something on clipboard to Hispanic girl in her early teensA new study has found that 7 percent of all homicides of youth aged 11 to 18 years are committed by an intimate partner. But minors experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) face a range of barriers to the services and protections that have been designed for adults experiencing IPV, a School of Public Health researcher writes in an editorial accompanying the study in JAMA Pediatrics.

To fill the gap, “healthcare professionals should take action in the clinical, policy, and advocacy arenas to support effective, youth-focused prevention and intervention,” write Emily Rothman, professor of community health sciences, and lead author Caroline Kistin and senior author Megan Bair-Merritt, both of Boston Medical Center and the School of Medicine.

The authors of the editorial write that pediatric medical centers are unique among healthcare settings in that they have nearly universal access to adolescents, and clinicians often know their patients throughout childhood and adolescence. The authors write that medical professionals who work with adolescents should make IPV screening a regular part of their patient visits—not only for cisgender female patients—and be prepared to offer emotional support, assess urgent safety risks including access to guns, and refer youth to community-based advocates and resources.

Beyond their own practices, the authors write, these medical professionals must also advocate against the current barriers that minors face trying to get IPV services and protections. Restraining orders are out of reach for minors in many states, and “surrender laws”—which require anyone with a restraining order against them to surrender their firearms—do not protect minors who are unable to get a restraining order in the first place. There are also often legal restrictions barring unaccompanied minors from emergency IPV shelters, and many shelters for runaway or homeless minors do not have on-site IPV services, they write.

“To provide optimal care, health care professionals must therefore strongly advocate and fight for legislation that takes into account the circumstances and protective needs of adolescents affected by IPV,” the authors write.

—Michelle Samuels

Explore Related Topics:

  • adolescents
  • dating abuse
  • domestic abuse
  • domestic violence
  • Intimate partner violence
  • physical dating violence
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