Intimate Partner Violence in Black Communities: A Scoping Review to Inform Black-Centred Prevention Efforts in Canada

Intimate partner violence (IPV) remains a persistent burden in Black communities, yet dominant prevention approaches often fail to address the structural racism and discrimination that shape both exposure to violence and access to support. Guided by Critical Race Theory and Arksey and O'Malley's scoping review framework, this review synthesizes IPV literature from the United States and Canada to identify strategies centred on Black communities that may inform Black-centred prevention in Canada. A search of EBSCOhost, PubMed, ERIC, and Google Scholar identified 37 sources published between 2003 and 2025, including peer-reviewed articles, Canadian dissertations, and community reports. Four interrelated findings emerged from the review: (a) IPV preventive strategies and approaches in Black communities include informal, community-based, faith-based, and Africentric responses; (b) formal IPV services are often experienced as inaccessible or harmful, leading many Black survivors to avoid these supports and rely on informal networks instead; (c) Black men's engagement in IPV prevention emerged as an important dimension of community-based prevention; and (d) promising practices for Black-centred IPV prevention are grounded in Black-led, community-accountable, and structurally informed approaches. The findings suggest that informal and community-based responses remain vital sources of support and accountability, while formal IPV systems often reproduce structural racism and anti-Blackness in ways that undermine access, trust, and effectiveness. Advancing equitable IPV prevention requires strengthening Black-led, community-accountable, and structurally informed approaches while addressing the barriers embedded within formal systems.