Chair for Public Health and Health Sciences, Institute for Medical Information Processing, Biometry and Epidemiology

Project description:

Intimate partner violence is a recognised development and public health issue. Nearly one in three women globally are estimated to have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by their partner during their lifetime (Sardinha 2022). One of the times in life when women are believed to be spared from violence is pregnancy, a period when the well-being of the women and their unborn child is often prioritized. Yet, the reality is different. Worldwide, the prevalence of physical intimate partner violence during pregnancy ranges from 1 to 28 percent. One in four women abused during pregnancy report that the violence was directed at their abdomen (Devries 2010).

The PhD projects would be situated within the ERC-funded IMPROVE_LIFE project held by Prof. Stöckl and either 1) utilize data from the additional round of an existing cohort study that is currently collected from mothers, daughters and sons for IMPROVE_LIFE or 2) by conducting secondary analysis of a UK cohort study. Both analyses would investigate the long-term and intergenerational health and social effects and risk markers of violence during pregnancy, with the opportunity for students to pick their specific area of focus within the broad topic. Both datasets, from Bangladesh and the UK offer the opportunity to include biomarker data in addition to self-reported data on violence experiences collected among mother-child pairs over 25 years. In addition, students can also conduct multi-country analyses of cross-sectional data of the demographic and health surveys on the topic of violence during pregnancy.