Researching the Impact of Service Provider Education (RISE)

The RISE (Researching the Impact of Service Provider Education) Project is a 3.5-year, multi-phase project funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada that began in November 2019. Co-PIs Melissa Kimber, Meredith Vanstone and Donna Stewart seek to understand the family violence learning needs of social work and physician trainees and practitioners in Canada, as well as determine whether the Violence, Evidence, Guidance, and Action (VEGA) family violence educational resources support improvements in practitioner recognition and response to family violence (including intimate partner violence (IPV), child maltreatment, and children’s exposure to IPV) in clinical encounters.

The team has completed an environmental scan of existing policies, published a protocol, and interviewed over 100 physicians and social workers about their educational needs. A paper describing resident perspectives on learning about child maltreatment has been published and another on the topic of how physicians prefer to learn about responding to intimate partner violence is in-press in Violence Against Women. While analysis of phase 2 continues, the team has completed data collection and analysis of the final phase: user-testing of the existing educational materials.

MD/PhD student Alice Cavanagh, an integral contributor to this project, will defend her dissertation on this topic in October 2022.