Newswise — Two new grants totaling $2.2 million will fund Johns Hopkins School of Nursing Professor Nancy Glass, PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN, in the development of nationally accessible, culturally diverse, and age-appropriate resources to help protect survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault across the lifespan. Both grants will build off of Glass’s already successful and tailored myPlan safety decision app, a tool to help survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) understand their level of danger and make personalized plans for safety.

Advancing National Tools and Resources for Technology Initiatives in Victim Services is a two-year, $1.2 million grant in collaboration with Arizona State University and the National Domestic Violence Hotline funded by the Department of Justice Office for Victims of Crime.

The grant will address a critical need across the country for a comprehensive database of resources—with potential to include information about legal aid, financial and employment programs, health care, safe housing, child protection, and university/college services—to be made easily available and searchable by locality by victims of domestic and sexual violence.

Through the grant, the researchers will be able to include linguistically and culturally diverse services, disseminate the app to national, regional, state, and local crime victims’ programs, and establish a licensing agreement.

Adapting and Testing the myPlan App to Prevent Dating Violence with Adolescents is a three-year, $1 million grant in collaboration with the University of Missouri-Columbia funded by the Centers for Disease Control. The initiative will target 15- to 17-years-olds as an important age when awareness and understanding of healthy relationships are being built.

By enrolling 600 male and female adolescents, the researchers will measure risk for severe and lethal violence, compare outcomes including prevention/reduction of victimization and dating violence, physical and sexual violence, safety behaviors, self-efficacy for harm reduction and mental health, and develop strategies for integrating the myPlan app into established education programs and policies.

In both studies, Glass will serve as principal investigator.

“Expanding resources for survivors is much needed in the context of domestic and sexual violence as a public health problem,” says Glass. “As we’ve seen increases in women coming forward to raise awareness and take action for their safety, we need to do a better job of integrating current resources and making them more easily available. For our teens especially, early education, information about healthy relationships, and easy access are crucial to curbing dating violence before it reaches its highest peak between ages 18-24.”

Since 2002, Glass has been principal investigator of eleven federally funded multidisciplinary research projects to improve safety, health, and economic security and address gender inequality in diverse community and clinic settings. She is the Independence Chair in Nursing Education at JHSON and Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health.

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Located in Baltimore, the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing is a globally-recognized leader in nursing education, research and practice and ranks No. 1 nationally among graduate schools of nursing and No. 2 for DNP programs in the U.S. News & World Report 2019 rankings. In addition, the school is ranked by QS World University as the No. 3 nursing school in the world and is No.1 by College Choice for its master’s program. First opened in 1889, the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing is celebrating throughout 2019 its 130th anniversary as a school and leader in nursing education and excellence. For more information, visit www.nursing.jhu.edu and www.hopkinsnursing130.org.