Media Releases and Opportunities

Using the insights of frontline workers and survivors of gender-based violence, researchers at Dalhousie University have come up with recommendations to help develop a national action plan to address violence against women.

In 2022, the federal government committed $600 million over five years to create a plan to combat gender-based violence. To provide some guidance, researchers did a peer-reviewed qualitative analysis of the perspectives of leaders in the sector, service providers and survivors on what should be in the national action plan on violence against women, or VAW.

Alexa Yakubovich, an assistant professor in Dalhousie's Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, led the community-based study on VAW programming during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Greater Toronto Area. She is also planning to expand the study to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and other parts of Ontario.

The team, releasing the findings today, came up with 12 recommendations in four main areas: investment in direct support organizations; equitable housing and other structural supports; strategic co-ordination of health, justice and social care systems; and, primary prevention strategies, including policy change to better address women’s needs.

Dr. Yakubovich is available to discuss the recommendations aimed at combatting violence against women and intimate partner violence, which is estimated to have affected roughly 44 per cent of Canadian women and has been on the rise since the start of the pandemic.

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Media contact:

Alison Auld
Senior Research Reporter
Communications, Marketing and Creative Services
Dalhousie University
Cell: 1-902-220-0491
Email: alison.auld@dal.ca