Violent Injuries among Women in an Urban Area

The national statistics are familiar by now: each year, more than 2 million women are raped and/or physically assaulted; more than one-third of them are injured during their most recent assault. Annually, more than 500,000 women seek medical services as a result of violence-related injuries, often from hospital emergency departments. But national statistics cannot fully capture the extent of violence experienced by women in inner-city areas, nor do they point to modifiable risk factors at a community level. This Issue Brief highlights a new study that investigates the circumstances and correlates of violent injuries among women in one urban, low-income community.