Global Family Doctor

WONCA Special Interest Group on Family Violence reports

Special Interest Group News November 2015

November, 2015

We are proud to send you the first newsletter of the WONCA Special Interest Group on Family Violence.

We would in particular like to welcome delegates of colleges or academies who want to become involved in training and action against any type of family violence. On the 23th October we will also meet after the conference time to discuss formal statements on Family Violence (FV) and further activities. You are all warmly invited or can join the discussion online.

Since 2004, the issue of family violence has been raised by numerous researchers and practitioners from different backgrounds during WONCA conferences. At the WONCA World conference in Prague in 2013 representatives of Europrev, the WONCA Working Party on Women and Family Medicine, the Vasco da Gama Movement, and a core group of researchers from an informal interest group on Family Violence met to constitute the WONCA Special Interest Group on Family Violence (SIGFV), which was endorsed formally in January 2014 by the Executive of WONCA world.

Among the specific objectives of the group are: to update and disseminate available scientific evidence on family violence in general practice/family medicine and primary health care and to generate recommendations based on this evidence; if evidence is not sufficiently available we aim to establish a consensus based approach and to share and elaborate new evidence such as for preventive measures, care strategies and policy development worldwide. On these bases was inspired also this newsletter: to share activities, evidence and improve the communication in order to achieve the goals of the SIGFV.

We have been running in collaboration with the WONCA Working Party on Women and Family Medicine, the Vasco da Gama Movement and Europrev workshops in almost all WONCA Meetings since 2014 and prepare our first formal statements during the WONCA Istanbul conference.