Empowering Safety: The Case for a Decision-making App for Military Partners Facing Intimate Partner Violence

Introduction Intimate partner violence (IPV) is an important public health concern among military-connected populations, but help-seeking, disclosure, and safety planning may be shaped by military-specific factors, including command structure, relocation, housing dependence, and privacy concerns. This exploratory study described self-reported IPV experiences, resource awareness, and perceptions of a hypothetical military-specific decision-making and safety-planning smartphone application among women recruited from a primary care medical clinic at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Materials and Methods Using a single-site convenience sample, 18 female service members and civilians completed a 106-item online survey adapted from selected National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey domains and supplemented with study-specific questions. Analyses were descriptive only. The study was not designed to estimate population prevalence, compare subgroups, evaluate app effectiveness, or assess implementation feasibility. Results Within this small clinical sample, 9 of 18 participants reported IPV-related experiences during the previous 24 months. Emotional abuse and coercive control were the most commonly reported experiences. Reported health and social concerns included difficulty sleeping, chronic pain, financial stress, and resource needs related to housing, legal, community, and advocacy services. Awareness and prior use of IPV-related apps were low; however, 13 of 17 respondents expressed interest in a confidential, military-relevant IPV prevention or safety-support app. Conclusion These findings should be interpreted as descriptive and hypothesis-generating. They suggest low awareness of existing digital IPV resources and preliminary interest in a military-specific safety-support tool within this small convenience sample. Larger studies are needed to evaluate recruitment feasibility, acceptability, sustained use, safety, help-seeking outcomes, and implementation considerations in military-connected populations.