Strengthening What Works: Preventing Intimate Partner Violence in Immigrant and Refugee Communities

Strengthening What Works: Preventing Intimate Partner Violence in Immigrant and Refugee Communities (SWW) was a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) in collaboration with LTG Associates to identify promising practices to prevent intimate partner violence (IPV) among immigrant and refugee populations in the U.S. RWJF invested $4.5 million in a pioneering effort to understand the lessons from eight diverse IPV prevention programs for immigrants and refugees as a way to support emerging models for IPV prevention, improve the health and well-being of underserved, vulnerable populations, and to catalyze new public health approaches, and utilize innovative solutions to reduce IPV, a serious public health problem among diverse ethnic populations. The initiative also focused on building the capacity of organizations working in communities to conduct and utilize evaluations to enhance their work and improve their effectiveness. LTG worked with RWJF to recruit and engage with a national expert panel which was convened largely electronically and which LTG managed. LTG conducted a national environmental scan of IPV prevention and a comprehensive review of the relevant literature resulting in an analytic bibliography featuring over 1,200 citations; the bibliography was presented on the RWJF website. LTG identified key elements in effective interventions to prevent IPV featured in a nationally distributed policy brief; LTG has conducted national briefings across policy and program audiences to report the results.