Health Care Response to Domestic Violence
             A pattern of assaultive and coercive behaviors, including physical, sexual, and psychological attacks as well as economic coercion, that adults or adolescents use against their intimate partners.
             Domestic violence is virtually impossible to measure with absolute precision due to numerous complications including the societal stigma that inhibits victims from disclosing their abuse and the varying definitions of abuse used from study to study. Estimates range from 960,000 incidents of violence against a current or former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend per year1 to 3.9 million women who are physically abused per year.2
             On July 22, 1997, UNICEF released The Progress of Nations, 1997, which found that a quarter to half of women around the world have suffered violence from an intimate partner.3
             Nearly one-third of American women (31 percent) report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives, according to a 1998 Commonwealth Fund survey.4
             Thirty percent of Americans say they know a woman who has been physically abused by her husband or boyfriend in the past year.5
             While women are less likely than men to be victims of violence crimes overall, women are five to eight times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner.6
             Injuries and Other Health Consequences of Domestic Violence:
             The U.S. Department of Justice reported that 37% of all women who sought care in hospital emergency rooms for violence-related injuries were injured by a current or former spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend.7
             Domestic violence is repetitive in nature: about 1 in 5 women victimized by their spouse or ex-spouse reported that they had been a victim of a series of at least 3 assaults in the last 6 months.8
             The level of injury resulting from domestic violen
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