About us
Domestic and family violence (DFV) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in Australia and globally, particularly affecting women and children.
DFV (physical, sexual, psychological abuse and coercive control) affects approximately 24% of Australian women in their lifetimes and it is associated with negative mental and physical health outcomes and increased use of health services and financial costs to the victim/survivor and the health system. We aim to connect researchers, clinicians, educators, students, and the broader community who are working on or interested in DFV research, teaching and practice.
Established in 2021, the UNSW Faculty of Medicine and Health WATTLE Network aims to promote excellence in medicine and health research, education and practice through a direct academic focus on prevention and health responses to DFV.
We are an interdisciplinary network of currently 15 members from across the faculty of medicine and health, bringing together individuals with backgrounds in clinical medicine, psychiatry, obstetrics, child and adolescent health, exercise physiology and public health.
Our vision
We hope to contribute to a world where everyone can live well and free from DFV.
We aim to ensure the highest quality of research and teaching in medicine and health at UNSW, and to position DFV as central to ensuring excellence in medicine and health research, education and practice.
Our Mission includes
- Supporting and undertaking high quality research: Building the empirical evidence base to prevent and respond to DFV, through a health and medicine lens.
- Transforming health and medical education: Redesigning curricula to embed a trauma and violence informed approach into every learning area. Advocating for trauma and violence informed approaches for students and the health workforce.
- Implementation and sustainability: Translating evidence into real world settings across the spectrum of prevention, early intervention, response, and recovery.
- Participatory research and learning: Using research and teaching practices that embed empirical and lived experience to create a knowledge base that informs medicine, improves practice, interventions and prevention.
- Intersectionality: Acknowledging the impact of multiple forms of oppression and trauma that intersect to increase health risks associated with DFV.
- Advocacy for social change: Applying and sharing evidence to challenge structural factors that promote or condone DFV.
The WATTLE Network welcomes students, researchers, educationalists, and the health workforce to join the network to participate in teaching and educational activities, collaborate on research projects and gain support for your ideas, teaching and research.
Please contact these WATTLE members to find out more: Susan Rees s.j.rees@unsw.edu.au Amanda Henry Amanda.henry@unsw.edu.au Megan Kalucy m.kalucy@unsw.edu.au, Kimberlie Dean k.dean@unsw.edu.au
