Wisconsin Domestic Violence Housing First Pilot Program Evaluation (2021-2024)
Drs. Barnes (LaFollette School), Walsh (Psychology and Gender and Women’s Studies) and Sims (former UW Agriculture and Applied Economics graduate student and current Assistant Professor of Microeconomics for Public Policy, University of Denver) were awarded a 3-year $337,500 contract from the Wisconsin Department for Children and families to evaluate the Wisconsin Domestic Violence Housing First Pilot Program. This award and the pilot program more broadly were made possible with federal funding from the American Rescue Plan and will allow the investigators to study how nine domestic violence service sites across the state are implementing the Housing First philosophy, which prioritizes safe, stable, and permanent housing for DV survivors. The investigators will be able to study the effects of the program on individual DV survivors as well as on DV organizations and surrounding communities more broadly. Drs. Barnes and Walsh also secured a $60,000 supplemental Wisconsin Idea Collaboration grant to fund a Project Assistant and work closely with the Wisconsin Extension program, Rent Smart.
Sims, K., Barnes, M., & Walsh, K. (2024). From philosophy to practice: Designing a multi-method, multi-stage program evaluation of the Wisconsin Domestic Violence Housing First pilot program. Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1177/00469580231214759
Understanding How the Forensic Nurse Exam Can be Improved to Reduce Health Disparities among LGBTQ+ and Racial and Ethnic Minority Survivors of Sexual Assault (2022-2023)
Drs. Klein, Luebke, and Walsh were awarded a $75,000 Clinical and Community Outcomes Research Pilot Award from the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at UW-Madison to develop community-engaged research to study how the post-assault medical care could be improved to reduce health disparities experienced by survivors of color and LGBTQ+ survivors. This award allowed the research team to develop their study methods in collaboration with nurses, survivors of color, and LGBTQ+ survivors and collect pilot data to apply for external funding from the National Institutes of Health.
Klein, L. B., Melnik, J., Curran, K., Luebke, J., Moore, K. M., Ruiz, A. M., Brown, C., Parker, D., Hernandez-White, I., & Walsh, K. (2024). Trauma-and violence-informed empowering care for sexual assault survivors. Journal of forensic nursing, 10-1097.
A Mixed-Methods, Multi-Stakeholder Study to Understand and Improve Access to Post-Sexual Assault Care for Survivors of Color, LGBTQ+ Survivors, and/or Survivors Living in Poverty (2023-2025)
Drs. Klein, Luebke, and Walsh were awarded a $250,000 Increasing Social and Economic Inclusion grant from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Graduate Research and Education to expand the forensic nurse exam project to understand the role of poverty, barriers to accessing care, and the perspectives of multiple stakeholders who provide post-assault care, including hospital-based social workers, mental health personnel, emergency department staff, tribal clinic leaders, and advocates.
Innovative Approaches to Understanding How, Why and Under What Conditions Young People Trade Virtual and In-Person Sexual Contact for Financial Compensation (2021-present)
Trading sex for financial compensation is a complex public health problem. Drs. Gerassi and Walsh have developed a research agenda to improve the measurement and understanding of sex trading among young people. They have interviewed and surveyed undergraduate and graduate students to develop and psychometrically test a comprehensive multi-item measure that assesses nuances of sex trading acts, motivations, compensations, risk and protective behaviors, and positive and negative consequences. In addition to the published manuscripts listed below and several others in progress, they submitted a R01 to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (PI: Gerassi) to study these phenomena among young adults in national samples of young adults.
Gerassi, L. B., Zimmerman, L., & Walsh, K. (2024). Psychometric properties of the sexual services acts materials for pay (SSAMP) index: Identifying the virtual, in-person, and material sex trades for financial compensation. The Journal of Sex Research, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2024.2362897
Gerassi, L. B., Zimmerman, L., & Walsh, K. (2024). Toward a multi-item measure to identify involvement in and circumstances of the sex trades: Findings from cognitive interviews. The Journal of Sex Research, 61(7), 1062-1072. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2023.2228768
Gerassi, L. B., Zimmerman, L., & Walsh, K. (2024). Students’ perspectives of providing sexual acts, materials, and services for financial compensation at a large, public, Midwestern university. Journal of American College Health, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2024.2367995
Gerassi, L. B., Lowe, S., & Walsh, K. (2023). University students who report exchanging sex for money or other compensation: Findings from a public university sample. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 52(1), 459-468. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02215-1
Remote Tech Clinic to Combat Tech-Enabled Domestic Abuse in Wisconsin (2023-2026). Drs. Chatterjee and Walsh were awarded a $750,000 grant from the Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime to expand access to a technology clinic that can support survivors of domestic violence by reducing risk for technology-facilitated abuse and stalking.
Other Progress and Activities Related to Sexual Violence Research and Community Impact
Testing a Video and Text Messaging Intervention to Reduce PTSD and Opioid Misuse among Sexual Violence Survivors (2023-2029)
Dr. Walsh was awarded a $4.2 million dollar grant to develop and test and video and text messaging intervention that can be delivered to sexual violence survivors immediately following sexual violence to mitigate risk for PTSD and opioid misuse. She and her team have been working with a sexual assault Community Advisory Board to refine the video and develop a text message program.
Strengthening Sexual Assault Services on the University of Wisconsin’s Campus (2020-2023)
Dr. Walsh was awarded a 3-year $500,000 grant from the Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) to expand sexual assault services at UW-Madison. To better understand student needs, Dr. Walsh conducted interviews with 29 survivors with diverse gender, sexual orientation, and racial identities and a team of undergraduate students helped her code the interviews and co-authored the below manuscript:
Walsh, K., Melnik, J., Birkett, A., Kidd, G., Bujan, G., Mehta, A. H., & Meyer, N. (2023). “I’m not going to do it alone”: A qualitative study of barriers to sexual assault service-seeking among college students. Journal of American college health, 1-12. https://doi/pdf/10.1080/07448481.2023.2283732
This funding allowed the campus to hire our first full-time sexual and relationship violence advocate and Dr. Walsh partnered with Dane Multi-Agency Center (DaneMAC) and the Rape Crisis Center to bring forensic nurse exams to University Health Services during business hours. Between July 2021 and September 2023, more than 100 students presented to UHS for a forensic nurse exam and nearly all noted that they would not have gone off campus to receive this care. We have also been able to serve ~200 students through new comprehensive advocacy services this grant provided to campus.
As part of this OVC grant, in spring 2023, Dr. Walsh conducted a representative survey of UW-Madison undergraduate and graduate students to understand experiences of sexual violence since coming to campus, awareness of and perceptions of resources, and resource utilization and satisfaction. As part of this study, she also collaborated with Dr. Chatterjee to add questions about technology-facilitated abuse; the following abstract resulted:
Gupta, N., Das, S., Walsh, K., & Chatterjee, R. (2024, May). A Critical Analysis of the Prevalence of Technology-Facilitated Abuse in US College Students. In Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-12).