Coordinated Community Response Frameworks During COVID-19: Challenges and Opportunities for Resilience Building

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Sociology
• Emergency Management

Background:

• Domestic violence services rely on coordinated community responses (CCRs) for comprehensive victim support.
• The COVID-19 pandemic presented unprecedented challenges to established service delivery models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the resilience of U.S. state and territorial domestic violence coalitions' CCRs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• To identify key challenges and successful strategies for maintaining CCRs in large-scale emergencies.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative study involving interviews with leaders of domestic violence coalitions across U.S. states and territories.
• Data collected from 25 out of 56 state and territorial coalitions.

Main Results:

• Major challenges included maintaining community service coordination infrastructure, ensuring continuity of law enforcement and legal system involvement, adapting evidence-based practices for virtual delivery, and sustaining networking, training, and outreach efforts.
• Specific difficulties were encountered in service coordination, legal system integration, virtual service adaptation, and maintaining essential outreach and training.

Conclusions:

• The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the operational capacity of coordinated community responses for domestic violence.
• Understanding the elements of CCRs that proved resilient is crucial for enhancing integrated service continuity and ensuring robust systems for future disaster preparedness.