Violence, Health and Society: VISION

The vision underlying the Consortium on 'Violence, Health and Society' is that improving the knowledge base on violence and using this knowledge to inform changes to policy and practice will improve population health and reduce health inequalities. It will do so by acting on 'upstream' harms to health caused by violence. Research on such interventions is developing but is held back by weak theory and weak data. Theory is weak because it is often focused on individuals rather than on the system level. We will develop systems analysis using complexity theory that allows consideration of feedback loops that generate wicked problems and perverse outcomes. We will embed questions about the significance of multiple intersecting inequalities including gender and ethnicity into the theory underpinning the systems framework. Data is weak because, collected by multiple agencies for their own purposes, it is fragmented and incommensurable. We will work with data providers to develop survey and administrative data in health, justice and specialised services and translate it into our shared measurement framework. We will curate existing datasets rather than collect new data. We will use natural language processing to turn free-text narratives into quantitative data. We will integrate data using probabilistic individual profiles, which offers a powerful new route to data linkage that avoids the dangers of identifying real people. We will interrogate our newly improved data with questions about the nature of the causal pathways connecting violence, health and society to identify promising sites of intervention. We will develop cost-benefit analysis and evaluate interventions, using findings to build the theory of change. With our partners in health, justice, specialised services and government, we will seek to embed the new measurement in practice, to enable evidence-based feedback on developments to reduce violence and thereby improve health and reduce health inequalities.