Creating VIP Corps to Reduce Maternal Deaths

Description

The participant population defined in this study are undergraduate and professional students within their last educational year in a helping professionals program at the University of Kentucky, ages 18-30. This study will permit the creation of effective programming to train the next generation of health and social service professionals prepared to help reduce Kentucky’s maternal mortality and injury rates over time with implementation.

Aim 1:

1. Create and rigorously evaluating Violence Intervention and Prevention Corps (VIP Corps) training using a randomized controlled trial among undergraduate and professional students.
2. Develop a novel maternal injury surveillance system (MISS) as a complement to an existing maternal violent deaths registry to accurately and reliably enumerate maternal injuries and deaths due to violence.

Aim 2:

1. Determine the effectiveness of complementary intervention and prevention strategies to increase interpersonal violence, substance use/disorder (IPV, SU/D), depression or anxiety screening.
2. Reduce symptoms among those who screen positive, and ultimately reduce maternal injuries and deaths due to violence.
3. Prospectively evaluate the effectiveness of a novel VIP training as the intervention condition relative to an attention control (SU/D and IPV awareness), to increase knowledge of the effects of intimate partner violence (IPV) on health outcomes, report intimate partner violence (IPV) screening behaviors, intimate partner violence (IPV) detection, and to reduce intimate partner violence (IPV) frequency among patients and clients over time.