[Health advocacy in violence against women: an experience].
The development of political responses to a problem needs for its construction as a social problem of a continuous epidemiological surveillance system available for the affected public and key decision makers. A women's health advocacy net based initiative was launched in November 2003. Every month the epidemic index of deaths (ratio of deaths in that month and median of deaths occurring the previous 5 years) due to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is published in a section called "Violence Alert" of e-leusis.net a women's web page. The objective was giving visibility to information contributing to shape the problem. from a population perspective. The initiative was introduced at the beginning to journalists and every month a press release with the index results and a comment on it is circulated. More than half of the months studied (January 2003-December 2004) were epidemic (epidemic indexb > or = 1.25). "Violence alert" has received 2330 visits since then, an average of 65 visits per week. The page attracted media coverage from radio, TV and newspapers.
Vives-Cases
Carmen
C
Departamento de Salud Pública, Universidad de Alicante, 03080 Alicante, España. carmen.vives@ua.es
Alvarez-Dardet
Carlos
C
Colomer
Concha
C
Bertomeu
Angustias
A
D003254:Consumer Advocacy; D017579:Domestic Violence / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D006708:Homicide / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D033181:Information Dissemination; D020407:Internet; D011159:Population Surveillance; D012621:Seasons; D013030:Spain; D014930:Women