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Advancing and scaling violence against women and girls interventions

Guest Editors

Tara Mantler, PhD, University of Western Ontario, Canada
Linda Murray, PhD, Massey University, New Zealand
Alicia Puente-Martínez, PhD, University of Salamanca, Spain


BMC Women's Health called for submissions to our Collection on Interventions in violence against women and girls (VAWG), remaining a poorly understood field. This Collection aimed to advance our understanding of VAWG, its overwhelming impact on women’s overall health, and the multi-level strategies we can use to reduce or eliminate it.


New Content ItemThis Collection supports and amplifies research related to  SDG 3: Good Health & Wellbeing, SDG 5: Gender Equality, and SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities.

Meet the Guest Editors

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Tara Mantler, PhD, University of Western Ontario, Canada

Tara Mantler, PhD, is an equity researcher focusing on gender-based violence, women's and children’s health and well-being, and rurality.  The aim of her research is to understand and address inequities.
 


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Linda Murray, PhD, Massey University, New Zealand

Dr Murray is a Public Health researcher based in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her research focuses on maternal and child health and development, women's health, and gender-based violence throughout the Asia-Pacific. She is also interested in transdisciplinary, planetary health research investigating the connections between human and ocean health. She uses both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, including community based participatory research.
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Alicia Puente-Martínez, PhD, University of Salamanca, Spain

Dr Puente-Martínez is an associate professor at the University of Salamanca (Spain), specializing in gender-based violence, emotional regulation, and health. Her research focuses on examining coping mechanisms and emotional regulation in cases of intimate partner violence across various contexts.  

About the Collection

BMC Women's Health called for submissions to our Collection on Interventions in violence against women and girls (VAWG), remaining a poorly understood field. This Collection aimed to advance our understanding of VAWG, its overwhelming impact on women’s overall health (e.g. causing bodily, mental, behavioral, and economic harm), and the multi-level strategies we can use to reduce or eliminate it.

Violence against women and girls is the most prevalent human rights violation committed worldwide. Its forms and severity vary from intimate partner violence, sexual violence, early or forced marriage, and femicide to current technology-facilitated violence (online or offline) such as cyberbullying, non-consensual sexting, doxing, and unwanted controlling of a woman’s whereabouts. It has short- and long-term detrimental consequences on the psychophysiological and economic status of women and girls, preventing their equal participation in society.

We invited researchers, practitioners, and scholars to contribute their original research on all aspects of VAWG interventions. Potential topics included, but were not limited to:

  • Primary prevention and early intervention strategies to mitigate the risk of violence against women and girls by individuals, families, and communities.
  • Efficacy evaluation of various interventions for victim-survivors as well as perpetrators of violence, including counseling modalities and psychoeducational programs
  • Factors that intersect with experiences and intervention outcomes of domestic violence, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic and immigration status.
  • Orchestrated integration of multiple-level interventions in addressing violence against women and girls by community-based initiatives, legal frameworks, policy advocacy.
  • Enhance innovative real-time prevention & intervention using context-based mobile apps (e.g. Safetipin and Ec Shlirë) to avoid VAWG, and support for victims of online harassment using AI-powered chatbots (e.g. Maru and Primero/GBVIMS+).


Image credit: Tinnakorn / Stock.adobe.com

  1. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is highly prevalent globally, with increased risk for women in situations of conflict, post conflict and resettlement. The Safety and Health after Arrival (SAHAR) study tested I...

    Authors: Jo Spangaro, Nigel Spence, Nicola Man, Jeannette Walsh, Jacqui Cameron, Kelsey Hegarty, Jane Koziol-McLain, Tadgh McMahon, Anthony Zwi, Chye Toole-Anstey and Astrid Perry-Indermau
    Citation: BMC Women's Health 2025 25:167
    Content type: Research Published on:

  2. Empowerment-based self-defense (ESD) programs have proven effective in preventing sexual violence (SV) among girls in diverse settings, yet their effectiveness in South Africa remains unexplored. In this hybri...

    Authors: Miriam Hartmann, Shepherd Mutangabende, Stephen Nash, Erica N. Browne, Abigail Hatcher, Anna E. Kågesten and Sarah T. Roberts
    Citation: BMC Women's Health 2025 25:119
    Content type: Research Published on:

  3. In Italy, approximately 50% of women report experiencing episodes of psychological and/or physical violence. The Emergency Department (ED) is widely recognized as one of the health services to which victims of...

    Authors: Eliana Gabellini, Andrea Salvatori, Maria Teresa Greco, Cristina Cattaneo, Stefano Tambuzzi, Maria Antonella Costantino and Antonio Giampiero Russo
    Citation: BMC Women's Health 2025 25:61
    Content type: Research Published on:

  4. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is widespread in the WHO African region with generalised HIV epidemics and may contribute to ongoing HIV transmission through its associations with behaviours associated with HI...

    Authors: Alexandra A. Cordeiro, Louisa Moorhouse, Tawanda Dadirai, Rufurwokuda Maswera, Angela Y. Chang, Constance Nyamukapa and Simon Gregson
    Citation: BMC Women's Health 2024 24:592
    Content type: Research Published on:

    The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Women's Health 2024 24:632

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of original Research Articles. Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Advancing and scaling violence against women and girls interventions" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.