Project: Domestic and Intimate Partner Violence and Child Abuse (2018-2019) (Collaboration with Wellspan)
Student Researchers: Raven Alwine-Frank, Kaelen Dowdall, Gabriel Penn, and Brandon Partlow
Introduction & Background
“As a methodology, The Geographic Approach is used for location-based analysis and decision making. GIS professionals typically employ it to examine selected geographic datasets in detail, which are combined for the comprehensive study and analysis of spatial problems. This methodology parallels the well-known scientific method and includes a research-focused, iterative process for examining diverse datasets and uncovering potential solutions. GIS augments the analytic process, helping give people a clearer understanding of complex problems that often include geographic components. This in turn allows better decision making and more opportunities to conserve limited resources, as well as improves the way we work. Many experienced GIS professionals intuitively begin their projects with a structured methodology of this nature. But for those new to GIS technology, these five steps will provide a defined and proven approach.
We chose this topic because we are interested in the relationship between domestic abuse, poverty, distance from social resources, and ability to find transportation to get there along with geographic conflictions that disable people that are abused from reaching certain social resources. We hope to bring to light where domestic and intimate partner violence and child abuse occur and why it is so prevalent in these locations. As well as looking into places that could do more for the individuals that are being affected by abuse.”
Problem/Issue Statement
“Our healthcare system is especially concerned about domestic/ intimate partner violence increases which have been observed nationally (and internationally). The trends are alarming- already nationwide reports are demonstrating more severe injuries related to both intimate partner violence and child abuse appearing in Emergency Rooms. The class could assist our community partners and healthcare system to understand violence trends, community resource ‘reach’ and gaps, and the influence of isolation on these critical topics. The school districts are demonstrating various methods of educating students which could be considered, as could a rural vs urban influence on this topic.”
Conclusions
“The final step includes the documentation of project results and the presentation of the maps and charts. Through this project, the domestic abuse within York County, PA has been mapped and quantified. Individual regional maps have been created showing the regional boundary, municipal boundaries, domestic abuse, social services, poverty, and bus route layers. The tabulation of results depicted as pie charts Key takeaways from this project
1.The most prevalent domestic abuse rates have bus routes that go through zipcodes.
2.The heaviest domestic violence areas are places that have the highest amounts of poverty
3.Police stations are more present in areas with high domestic violence and high poverty, while hospitals are more present in lower to medial rates of domestic abuse.
During this project we initially had the hypothesis we had the idea that we could compare former data to more recent data to compare how domestic violence had changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This idea had to be subtracted from the project due to the lack of data able to be obtained compared to the older data that was already gone through and sorted for the 2018-2019 domestic violence data. From this setback we only focused on the older data not comparing it to the present data. This data combines child abuse and domestic violence together as one number. Another takeaway from this project if this project was taken again a larger data set would help to show a larger impact on mapping this issue. While also expanding the sources data is collected while making sure data does not overlap. Another addition that could be added to the map was even older data to compare to see if the domestic violence issue is expanding or staying the same as time goes on.”
Click here to view the Project Poster
