Increasing Resilience of Survivor-Centered Social Systems: Adapting to COVID Related Constraints in Access to Services and Built Environment Use Patterns

家庭暴力是一个广泛而复杂的问题，每年在美国影响1200万受害者。在灾害和紧急情况之后，由于一系列复杂的因素，家庭暴力的风险增加，包括经济压力、社区动态的变化以及无法获得定期的社区支助。对灾难的影响和严重程度越大，家庭暴力的发生率就越高。这一点在飓风、野火、地震、石油泄漏、2009年H1N1新作甲型流感等大流行以及埃博拉等疫情中都是一致的。不足为奇的是，在新冠肺炎大流行期间，家庭暴力发生率有所上升。然而，新冠肺炎对S的影响是独一无二的，因为为控制疾病传播而实施的全职护理命令和其他措施也将受害者与施虐者隔离。寻求帮助的选择减少了，因为社会距离的减少，家庭暴力庇护所的容量减少，以及对感染新冠肺炎的恐惧阻碍了受害者寻求医疗和其他服务。对社会技术系统的破坏和对建筑环境使用模式的限制使提供健全和有效的服务变得困难，交通选择有限，获得住房、庇护所、托儿设施和其他服务的机会也受到限制。这项研究项目探讨了应对家庭暴力的机构和组织如何努力适应这一流行病，以及对服务、基础设施系统和建筑环境使用模式的必要限制。这些研究结果将为增进流行病期间和灾后可能遭受家庭暴力的数百万人的健康和福利提供关键数据。在非灾难环境中，为家庭暴力受害者提供支持的机构利用赋权理论，利用关键基础设施系统和建设的环境来支持受害者，提供以幸存者为中心的服务。然而，灾害造成的中断，特别是新冠肺炎造成的中断，挑战了提供商维持以赋权为中心的服务提供的能力。这一点意义重大，因为与未中断的服务和环境相比，新冠肺炎大流行期间以幸存者为中心的家庭暴力服务和已建环境受到干扰的情况普遍，可能与幸存者获得资源的机会减少和家庭暴力发生率上升有关。这项研究的目的是在灾害背景下测试赋权模型，并扩展这些模型以适应灾后向脆弱人群提供服务的建成环境使用模式。将赋权模式扩展到灾害领域将改善家庭暴力系统在灾害环境中的功能，并将作为原型，提高作为赋权模式社会背景一部分的其他社会制度的效力。这项研究将提供关键证据，支持研究和实践中的变化，将赋权模式扩展到灾害领域和建筑环境领域。更广泛地说，这项研究有助于我们理解在人口、社会学-技术系统和灾害期间和灾后建筑环境使用模式变化的背景下，理论模型在灾后服务提供方面的优势和局限性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Domestic violence is a widespread and complex problem affecting 12 million victims each year in the US. Following disasters and emergencies, the risk of domestic violence increases due a complex set of factors including economic stress, changes in community dynamics, and lack of access to regular community-based supports. Greater exposure to a disaster’s impacts and severity is associated with higher rates of domestic violence. This has been consistent across hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, oil spills, pandemics like the 2009 H1N1 Novel Influenza A, and outbreaks like Ebola. Not surprisingly, rates of domestic violence have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, COVID-19’s impacts are unique because stay-at-home orders and other measures implemented to control the spread of disease also isolated victims with their abusers. Help-seeking options are diminished as social distancing reduced capacity of domestic violence shelters and fear of contracting COVID-19 discouraged victims from seeking medical care and other services. Disruptions to socio-technical systems and constraints on built environment use patterns have made it difficult to provide sound and effective services, limited transportation options, and constrained access to housing, shelters, childcare facilities, and other services. This research project explores how agencies and organizations addressing domestic violence have attempted to adapt to the pandemic and the necessary constraints to services, infrastructure systems, and built environment use patterns. The findings will provide key data for advancing the health and welfare of millions potentially vulnerable to domestic violence during pandemics and in the aftermath of disasters. In non-disaster settings, agencies that provide support for domestic violence victims draw on empowerment theories to deliver survivor-centered services utilizing critical infrastructure systems and built environments to support victims. However, disruptions resulting from disasters generally, and from COVID-19 specifically, have challenged providers’ ability to maintain the provision of empowerment-centered services. This is significant because the prevalence of disruptions to survivor-centered domestic violence services and built environments during the COVID-19 pandemic may be associated with both reductions in survivor access to resources and to higher rates of domestic violence, compared to services and environments that were not disrupted. The objective of this study is to test empowerment models in the context of disasters generally, and to extend these models to capture adaptations to the built environment use patterns where services are provided to vulnerable populations after a disaster. Extending empowerment models to the domain of disasters will improve domestic violence systems’ function in disaster settings and will serve as a prototype to improve the effectiveness of other social systems that are part of the social context of the empowerment models. This research will provide critical evidence to support changes in both research and practice that extend the empowerment models to the domain of disasters and the realm of built environments. More generally, this study is an important contribution to our understanding of the strengths and limitations of theoretical models to the post-disaster provision of services within the context of changes to populations, sociology-technical systems, and built environment use patterns during and after disasters.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.