As well as causing short-term physical injuries and death, intimate partner violence has long-term health effects that can begin years after violence began and persist after it has ended, requiring ongoing and often expensive care.
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Based on Lifetime health costs of intimate partner violence: A prospective longitudinal cohort study with linked data for out-of-hospital and pharmaceutical costs, from Jananie William, Bronwyn Loong, Dana Hanna, Bonny Parkinson, and Deborah Loxton, and published November 2022.
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The health effects of intimate partner violence last a lifetime, regardless of when the violence first happened.
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Women in Australia who experienced intimate partner violence had nearly $50,000 more in government-funded lifetime out-of-hospital health costs, on average, than women who didn’t experience violence.
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Policies that reduce intimate partner violence and intervene early would have long-term positive effects on the healthcare system.
Exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) is a highly significant contributor to total government-funded health costs across a woman’s lifetime. And new ANU-led research shows that it’s associated with higher out-of-hospital and pharmaceutical costs on average, regardless of whether IPV happened earlier or later in life.
Women who had experienced IPV were estimated to have around 13 per cent higher health costs than those who hadn’t experienced IPV, even after adjusting for other factors that could impact their health costs.
The results are based on data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health and span 23 years. They also suggest a causal relationship between IPV and these health costs.
For the sample of women in the dataset, they estimate that total excess lifetime cost was $87.6 million, calculated in 2020 currency. Applied to the portion of the population from which the sample was drawn, this number becomes a lifetime cost of $8.1 billion.
The results clearly indicate that long-term health outcomes for women who experience IPV are translating to higher government-funded costs, and that these costs persist throughout a woman’s life.
As impacts can last a lifetime, the situation of women who experience IPV early in life is especially important. The findings emphasise that investment in IPV policies directed at early intervention and primary prevention would benefit the health system and improve long-term outcomes of affected women.
Acknowledgment: The research on which this brief is based was conducted as part of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health by the University of Queensland and the University of Newcastle. We are grateful to the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care for funding and to the women who provided the survey data. The authors acknowledge the Australian Government Departments of Health and Aged Care, and Veterans’ Affairs, for providing MBS and PBS data; and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) as the integrating authority. We acknowledge the assistance of the Data Linkage Unit at the AIHW for providing the data linkage to the National Death Index.
“The results clearly indicate that long-term health outcomes for women who have experienced IPV are translating to higher government-funded costs, and that these persist throughout a woman’s life.”
