A chronic epidemic of domestic violence in the U.S. puts the safety and security of every American business and its bottom line at risk, according to Michelle Williams, Dean of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
In a February 23, 2017 opinion piece in The Huffington Post, Williams wrote that domestic violence—affecting 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men in the U.S.—occurs not just in the home but also in the workplace; that victims of domestic violence miss millions of paid workdays each year, which hurts both them and their employers financially; and that there’s been a lack of investment in research and public health surveillance of this “ubiquitous and persistent threat” and its impact on the workplace.
Williams called for people from multiple disciplines—public health, medicine, education, and business—to work together to make domestic violence prevention a bigger priority. She wrote, “Until we come together to face this threat, we won’t be doing our best to prevent it.”
Read an October 11, 2016 Huffington Post article on domestic violence by Dean Williams: Preventing Domestic Violence Is Everyone’s Business
Learn more
The Domestic Violence Crisis: Mobilizing the Public and Private Sectors (The Forum at Harvard Chan School)