Unsafe at home: The misery of intimate partner violence

he statistics are staggering — and so is the toll on society. Throughout the world, roughly 27 percent of women ages 15 to 49 experience violence by intimate male partners at least once during their lifetimes. The scourge costs society trillions of dollars and seriously harms children’s mental health.

“Each case of violence in a woman’s life is a tragedy for herself and for those around her, affecting not only the woman and her health and well-being, but also her family and community,” write two public health researchers in the 2024 Annual Review of Public Health. In their article, Susan B. Sorenson of the University of Pennsylvania and Heidi Stöckl of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich detail the scope of this urgent public health issue and how it might be more vigorously addressed.

Public health researcher Susan B. Sorenson
University of Pennsylvania

In 1986, Sorenson began teaching the first violence-prevention course in a US school of public health. She has authored more than 150 publications, many of them focused on the epidemiology and prevention of violence against women and, since retiring from her university position, has written a guide for parents of college students who have suffered a sexual assault.

Stöckl’s research focuses on the epidemiology of intimate partner violence and human trafficking, the global prevalence of intimate partner homicide and the perpetrators of child homicide, and trafficking for sexual exploitation and forced marriage. She conducted the first prevalence study on intimate partner violence during pregnancy in Germany and is currently investigating violence during pregnancy in Bangladesh.

Public health researcher Heidi Stöckl
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

Knowable Magazine recently interviewed Sorenson and Stöckl. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Link to full interview here.