In the last five years, national attention has turned to the whole area of women's health. With the emphasis on cancer, however, health professionals have paid less attention to the sobering statistics regarding intentional and unintentional injuries in women.
Every year, 43,000 women die from injuries, and 1 million are hospitalized. Injuries represent the leading cause of death for females ages 1 to 34.
Physical abuse accounts for a significant percentage of injuries and deaths from homicide in women. Even with many cases of abuse going unreported and untreated, about 1 million women receive emergency medical treatment each year in the United States for abuse-related injuries.
Women seek medical treatment for abuse nearly three times more often than for injuries related to motor-vehicle crashes.
I asked Dr. Andrew Dannenberg and Susan Baker, researchers for the Injury Prevention Center at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, to outline the scope of this serious problem for women.
Q: Have any patterns emerged in incidents of domestic violence?
A: Husbands, acquaintances and former partners make up a significant percentage of those inflicting physical violence on women. Risk factors for violence may include prior episodes of physical abuse, alienation from family and friends, alcohol use and male unemployment or underemployment.
Residents of rural areas also seem disproportionately affected by domestic violence.
Even pregnant women are not immune to the dangers of domestic violence.
In one study of 290 randomly selected pregnant women, 24 women, or 8 percent, reported that they had been physically battered during pregnancy.
Twenty-one of these 24 women also said they had been abused prior to the pregnancy.
Thus, pregnancy and the potential risk to a fetus does not deter an abuser.
Another study indicated that substance abuse by one or both partners was associated with an increased risk of physical abuse during pregnancy.
Q: What about domestic violence deaths in relation to overall homicide in women?
A: Homicide is the fourth-leading cause of injury death in women, accounting for 12 percent of all injury deaths. In 1989, 5,223 females died from homicide in the United States.
