Intimate partner violence.

1. Megan H. Bair-Merritt, MD, MSCE* 1. *Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Associate Director, Primary Care Fellowship Program, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Md. After completing this article, readers should be able to: 1. Describe the prevalence of intimate partner violence and childhood exposure to intimate partner violence. 2. Identify risk factors associated with intimate partner violence. 3. Explain the relationship of child maltreatment in the setting of intimate partner violence. 4. Recognize the impact of intimate partner violence exposure on children's social-emotional and physical health and health-care use. 5. Discuss strategies for screening and responding to intimate partner violence in the pediatric setting. You are seeing a healthy 4-month-old infant for a health supervision visit. As part of a routine social history, you inquire about intimate partner violence (IPV). The infant's mother discloses that her partner frequently yells at her, pushes her, and makes her feel afraid. On additional questioning, she describes the infant as “fussy.” The baby's physical examination findings are unremarkable, but you note that he missed his 2-month visit and is behind on his immunizations. How do you proceed? Family violence and domestic violence often are used synonymously and refer to violence occurring between any family member dyad, including parent-child, intimate partner-intimate partner, or sibling-sibling. IPV refers specifically to violence perpetrated between romantic partners and has been defined by the Family Violence Prevention Fund as “a pattern of purposeful coercive behaviors that may include inflicted physical injury, psychological abuse, sexual assault, progressive social isolation, stalking, deprivation, intimidation and threats. These behaviors are perpetrated by someone who is, was, or wishes to be involved in an intimate or dating relationship with an adult or adolescent victim and are aimed at establishing control of one partner over the other.” (1) Over the course of a lifetime, between one fourth …