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，美国每年有1200万受害者。在灾害和紧急情况发生后，由于一系列复杂的因素，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持，家庭暴力的风险增加。受到灾难影响和严重程度的影响越大，家庭暴力的发生率就越高。这在飓风、野火、地震、石油泄漏、2009年H1N1新型甲型流感等流行病以及埃博拉等疫情爆发中都是一致的。毫不奇怪，在2019冠状病毒病大流行期间，家庭暴力发生率有所上升。然而，COVID-19的影响是独特的，因为为控制疾病传播而实施的居家令和其他措施也将受害者与施虐者隔离开来。寻求帮助的选择减少了，因为社会距离降低了家庭暴力庇护所的能力，而且由于担心感染COVID-19，受害者不愿寻求医疗和其他服务。社会技术系统的中断和建筑环境使用模式的限制使得难以提供健全有效的服务，交通选择有限，获得住房、庇护所、儿童保育设施和其他服务的机会有限。本研究项目探讨了处理家庭暴力问题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。调查结果将为在大流行期间和灾害后促进可能易受家庭暴力侵害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提供以幸存者为中心的服务，利用关键的基础设施系统和建成的环境来支持受害者。然而，一般灾害，特别是COVID-19造成的中断，对提供商保持提供以赋权为中心的服务的能力提出了挑战。这一点很重要，因为与未受破坏的服务和环境相比，在2019冠状病毒病大流行期间，以幸存者为中心的家庭暴力服务和建成环境普遍受到破坏，这可能与幸存者获得资源的机会减少以及家庭暴力发生率升高有关。本研究的目的是测试灾害背景下的赋权模型，并扩展这些模型，以捕捉灾后向弱势群体提供服务的建筑环境使用模式的适应性。将赋权模式扩展到灾害领域将改善家庭暴力制度在灾害环境中的功能，并将作为一个原型，提高作为赋权模式社会背景一部分的其他社会制度的有效性。这项研究将为支持研究和实践的变化提供关键证据，将赋权模型扩展到灾害领域和建筑环境领域。更广泛地说，这项研究对我们理解在人口变化、社会技术系统和灾后建筑环境使用模式的背景下，灾后提供服务的理论模型的优势和局限性做出了重要贡献。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.