Communities coming together: a blueprint for lasting training partnerships between healthcare professionals and domestic violence agencies

Domestic violence is prevalent across the globe and knows no bounds to ethnicity, class, gender, or sexual orientation. Domestic violence has an annual fiscal impact on the healthcare system totaling more than $5.8 billion; $4.1 billion is for direct mental and medical health care services (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003). Health care providers are in need of training to work with domestic violence survivors, but how can that happen? Domestic violence agencies and hospitals were interviewed for this project to examine what needs to happen to develop a training partnership the two. In order to form a sustainable training partnership between hospitals and domestic violence agencies there must be open communication, established curriculum, and buy-in from the health care providers.