AVA is about creating the capacity to transform population (community) health and social services to promote health and wellness of girls and women at risk/affected by violence and adversity over the life-cycle, via a collaborative, innovative, cross-sectoral/disciplinary/jurisdictional training platform.
AVA stands to help reduce family violence and improve Canada’s UNICEF rankings for girls’ health and wellness, with positive lifespan, intergenerational and population impacts.
We are one out of the thirteen Health Research Training Platforms (HRTP) funded by the CIHR Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health (IHDCYH). Read more about this here.
Background
In 1989, a gunman shocked the nation when he murdered 14 young women and wounded 14 more at École Polytéchnique de Montreal because they were women.1 After that, the Canadian Government made a $3 million investment through the Ministry of Health to address the public policy, education, legislation and applied research on violence against women and children. In 1991, this resulted in the development of five sister centres2 of excellence in research and education on violence against women, and more broadly, gender-based violence. Over the intervening 30 years, these centres have conducted more than 400 studies, many employing community-based research methods, raised nearly $50 million dollars in research funding and trained nearly 2,000 scholars in gender-based violence that have seeded institutions across Canada and the globe. On the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Alliance, we seek to further the Alliance’s important work by taking our training to the next transformational level with AVA.
Our Objectives
To transform population (community) health and social services to promote health and wellness of girls and women at risk/affected by violence and adversity over the life-cycle.
To do this, we will:
- Reduce Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), especially violence
- Promote life-cycle & intergenerational health and wellness
- Support families
- Develop, deliver, test and integrate innovations across sectors
- Reduce health, economic, and social costs
Our Plan
- Prevent/address impacts of violence and ACEs on girls and women’s health and wellness
- Conduct collaborative Implementation Science (e.g. community-based) research
- Develop, test, implement, scale and spread evidence-based, innovative interventions
- Undertake essential, barrier-breaking cross-disciplinary/sectoral/jurisdictional research
- Undertake transformative strategic planning (development/management) and evaluation to influence programs and policy from service delivery to policy and systems levels
Why it Matters
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are considered “toxic” to children’s health and development, given their consistent links to lifespan poor outcomes, such as mental illness.3-5 The consequences of ACEs create significant costs for individuals, health and social services and society. Individuals lose productive, healthy years of life and increase their use of services for health conditions that could be prevented or mitigated.6-8 AVA delivers enhanced training focused on gendered ACEs and violence that will address these risks to reduce them.
Community agencies are critical to any solution to the problem of violence against girls and
women. However, not-for-profit (NFP) community agencies are often unable to systematically test and evaluate, let alone embed, much-needed evidence-based social innovations and interventions in their programming due to persistent funding constraints, strained human resources and limited research expertise, which in turn undermines implementation and sustainability.9-11 AVA’s enhanced, community-engaged training will enable better use of evidence-based interventions and innovations for girls and women affected by violence and ACEs.
We also lack a national cadre of community and academic researchers trained to break down barriers and undertake transformative strategic planning, management and evaluation to address ACEs and violence against women and girls. Community stakeholder engagement is foundational to AVA and will serve to break down in-group/out-group barriers which channel inequity.
Read Our Guiding Principles
- Four young men were also injured in the rampage. The all-female homicide victims included 12 engineering students, one nursing student and one clerk in the financial department.