Making the Case for Domestic Violence Prevention Through the Lens of Cost-Benefit
A Manual for Domestic Violence Prevention Practitioners
(and the State and Local Policy-Makers They Present to)
Conclusion
We thank the readers of this Manual for taking the time to consider the issues and conceptual tools presented here. Understanding the economic costs of domestic or intimate partner violence can help practitioners to make their programs stronger. It can also aid policy-makers in allocating resources more effectively and efficiently. Being able to articulate the economic cost of domestic and intimate partner violence (IPV) as well as provide clear support for the prevention approach in terms of its cost-effectiveness in addressing the problem of IPV will help policy-makers to make better decisions – and will bring more funding to practitioners.
It is the responsibility of domestic violence prevention practitioners to contribute to the evolution of cost-effectiveness approaches to decisions regarding domestic violence prevention. It is also the responsibility of these prevention practitioners to express the relationship between the cost and impact of their programs, and to state their cases in a way that will ensure them revenue streams for their domestic violence prevention work, thereby helping millions of people while saving society millions of dollars.
Those who have the tools of the cost-effectiveness approach must teach and make these available to domestic violence prevention practitioners. Domestic violence prevention can model the collection of relevant data and the comparison of prevention approaches on a broad scale, generating sound knowledge of best practices, and helping to stop the violence.