UW conference addresses violence against women

The School of Nursing, in conjunction with the Nursing Network on Violence Against Women International, is presenting a conference Sept. 28-30 on the international problem of violence against women.

Dozens of experts from around the world will present and discuss research findings and practical recommendations to confront violence against women. Rachel Rodriguez, assistant professor at the School of Nursing, will deliver the keynote address Friday at 1 p.m. on “Nurses’ Response to Violence Against Women as a Social Justice Issue: Action Research as a Tool for Liberation.”

Beginning Friday, Sept. 28, at noon, the conference will cover a multitude of topics related to violence against women. They include:

• Training health-care professionals to detect and confront domestic violence.
• Barriers to womens’ disclosure of violence in their lives.
• The link between domestic violence and child abuse.
• Adolescent dating violence.
• Responding to emotional abuse.
• Understanding the needs of older battered women.
• Changing the medical school curriculum to educate medical students about intimate-partner violence.

“The goal of this conference is to affirm the UN Platform of Action that asserts that all forms of violence against women are violations of human rights,” says conference chair Geri Diemer of the School of Nursing. “As health-care professionals, we must pay attention to how our health-care system responds to violence against women.”

About 300 nurses, doctors and health and human services providers are expected to attend the conference at the Concourse Hotel in downtown Madison.

The Nursing Network on Violence Against Women was formed to encourage the development of nursing practice focusing on health issues related to the effects of violence.