Violence against Women: The Health Sector Responds (Occasional publication ; no. 12)

Millions of women in the Americas and around the globe suffer the effects of physical, sexual, and emotional violence in their own homes every day. Their pain is too often silent and invisible to the rest of the world. Yet as many as one out of every three women are victims of gender-based violence, one of the most widespread human rights and public health problems in the world today. Using an integrated community approach involving the health sector, along with the legal, juridical, educational, religious and NGO sectors, buttressed by the development of national policies and laws, the PAHO strategy has helped create more than 150 local anti-violence networks throughout Latin America. The second part of Violence against Women: The Health Sector Responds highlights the results of the project's recent evaluation and includes numerous insights by health workers, schoolteachers, police and court officials, women's advocates, and other community leaders regarding the effectiveness of the project's approach. Most revealing of all, however, is the voices of the women themselves, as they describe living with violence and the community's response to their needs. The book's final chapter presents a global perspective on how the lessons learned in Central America and PAHO's integrated strategy may be applied in other communities around the world. The Region of the Americas has prioritized the achievement of health equity--"the absence of avoidable or remediable differences among groups of people, whether these groups are defined socially, economically, demographically or geographically" (WHO)--both through regional agreements, such as the Sustainable Health Agenda for the Americas (2017), and by reporting progress toward the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (the Sustainable Development Goals) (2015). Public sector policy is the principal initial lever through which both national and local governments institute and finance actions toward accelerating the achievement of equity in health. This study assessed 32 national health plans to report on whether and how countries in the Region are integrating the achievement of health equity into strategic lines of action in the health sector. It provides a snapshot of approaches and advances, allowing for knowledge sharing among countries on options for attention to equity in health policy. It will also facilitate future monitoring of trends in the integration of health equity aims and approaches in policies. The study found that stated overall commitments to health equity are common, as are commitments toward the disaggregation of data and monitoring of inequalities, while other elements of health equity like, for example, the identification of populations in situations of vulnerability, receive less attention. While further study is needed on the implementation and impacts of approaches in specific programmatic actions, the study provides useful insights to inform efforts for a stronger framework for health equity action toward the Region's goals for 2030 Violence against Women: The Health Sector Responds provides a strategy for addressing this complex problem and concrete approaches for carrying it out, not only for those on the front lines attending to the women who live with violence, but also for decision-makers who may incorporate the lessons in the development of policies and resources. For those communities where support for women does not yet exist, the authors hope that this book will motivate health providers and leaders to more directly confront the issue of genderrelated violence and ensure support to affected women in resolving th. Gender-based violence (GBV) is one of the most widespread human rights abuses and public health problems in the world today, affecting as many as one out of every three women. It is also an extreme manifestation of gender inequity, targeting women and girls because of their subordinate social status in society. The consequences of GBV are often devastating and long-term, affecting women's and girls' physical health and mental well-being. At the same time, its ripple effects compromise the social development of other children in the household, the family as a unit, the communities where the i Gender-based violence, or "violence against women," includes many kinds of harmful physical, emotional, and sexual behaviors against women and girls that are most often carried out by family members, but also at times by strangers.