WHO is seeking input from women with lived experience of violence/abuse for the update of the Responding to intimate partner violence and sexual violence against women WHO clinical and policy guidelines.
Background
In 2013, WHO published the WHO clinical and policy guidelines: Responding to intimate partner violence and sexual violence against women. The guidelines provide recommendations for health care providers on the clinical care for survivors, and recommendations for policy-makers and programme managers on service delivery, policy and management of services for the health response to violence against women.
To support implementation, a clinical handbook for health care providers provides practical guidance on clinical care and a health systems manual for health managers and policy-makers identifies what is needed to support providers in the delivery of survivor-centred, high quality and effective care. These tools have been translated into multiple languages beyond the official UN languages, including Armenian, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Timorese. The clinical handbook and a curriculum for training health care providers and health managers, based on the guidelines, are widely used in countries.
The field has moved forward since publication of the 2013 guidelines. New evidence has become available that would inform the update of some of the existing recommendations. The updated guidelines will include recommendations on topics not addressed earlier such as interventions for men who use violence and health promotion interventions.
For this, we have established a Guideline Development Group, made up of experts, including survivors, from different regions and sectors/disciplines, including research, advocacy, policy making, clinicians/service providers who will review the published evidence and the human rights and implementation considerations.
In addition, we seek to ensure that the voices of survivors from across the world inform our understanding of survivor-centred care. We have developed a short set of questions to be shared with survivors via survivor support organizations. We encourage any survivor not accessing support to seek out your nearest specialized service or helpline.
The questionnaire is private and anonymous. It asks a few things such as your age and the country in which you live, but there is no need to disclose your name or any personal information. The information will only be used in aggregate form to inform the guidelines and will not be published. The survey takes about 5 minutes to complete. If you would like more information or have issues you would like to raise, please contact: [email protected]