OWH Announces Project Connect Grantees to Improve Response to Domestic and Sexual Violence

The Office on Women’s Health (OWH), in partnership with Futures Without Violence, has selected 11 new grantees, five of which serve Native communities, to improve the health and safety of women and children. Project Connect: A Coordinated Public Health Initiative to Prevent Violence Against Women is a national initiative to change how adolescent health, reproductive health, and Native health services respond to sexual and domestic violence.

The selected grantees who will begin work in January 2013 include:

1. Delaware Coalition Against Domestic Violence
2. Idaho Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence
3. Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians (Michigan)
4. Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
5. Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women
6. Nooksack Tribal Health Clinic (Washington)
7. Oregon Health Authority
8. Passamaquoddy Health Center (Maine)
9. Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence
10. The Queen’s Medical Center (Hawaii)
11. Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California (Nevada)

Over the past three years, Project Connect has trained nearly 6,000 health care providers in specific interventions to assess for and respond to domestic and sexual violence in their clinical settings. Project Connect is supported by OWH and funded through the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2005. 

For more information on Project Connect, please visit http://www.womenshealth.gov/project-connect/.