WOMEN IDENTIFYING NEW GOALS OF SAFETY (WINGS) IN CONFLICT AFFECTED REGIONS OF UKRAINE

According to Radio’s Liberty (Radiosvoboda) analyses of data provided by United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the National Violence Hotline and the Geneva Center of Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), there were 1.85 million survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) in Ukraine in 2014-2017, and of these, only 83,000 contacted the police. IPV and gender based violence (GBV) in Ukraine remain underreported due to the lack of law enforcement investigations, as well as due to stigma and shame. Women in conflict-ridden regions of Ukraine are at heightened risk for GBV/IPV. The project will IPV/GBV in Luhansk and Donetsk regions, where the conflict is ongoing, and Dnipropetrovsk, which borders conflict areas, has major military bases and military hospitals, and has a population of internally displaced persons exceeding 74,000. The target population will include internally displaced women, women who live close to the conflict zone, female partners and family members of veterans, all of whom are women at risk of violence due to conflict, displacement and economic crisis. The Applicant will train social workers from mobile psychosocial support teams to deliver an evidence-based intervention: Women Identifying New Goals of Safety (WINGS). WINGS is a screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) approach designed by the Social Intervention Group (SIG) at Columbia University for low-resource settings. It helps to raise awareness on different types of IPV/GBV, identify risks and reduce risks of repeated abuse via strengthening social support and safety planning. The patient-level effectiveness outcomes for this project will include changes from pre-test to post-test in participant-reported physical, sexual, verbal and economic abuse, which will be assessed using a shortened 20-item version of the Revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2S). The provider-level effectiveness outcomes will be the number of clients served by each mobile team who were referred and successfully accessed violence prevention and HIV prevention services. The process evaluation will be guided by the RE-AIM framework. UFPH will use the RE-AIM Checklist for Study or Intervention Planning and RE-AIM Planning Tool and Adaptation to evaluate the project’s reach, adoption of the interventions, implementation outcomes (patient and provider acceptability, fidelity, and costs), and maintenance of the intervention one year after the project ends