CE25-029 - An examination of a state paid family leave policy as a family violence prevention strategy

PROJECT SUMMARY Family violence, including child maltreatment and intimate partner violence, is a common and costly public health problem with long-lasting impacts on victims. Infants experience the highest rates of child maltreatment, and the risk of intimate partner violence has been shown to increase in the period after the birth of a child. Yet, few family violence prevention policies target this critical period. In response to RFA-CE-25-029, this Mentored Research Scientist Development Award (K01) Application proposes to leverage novel data linkages to study the relationship between the implementation of a state paid family leave policy and family violence. Specifically, the proposed study will pursue the following aims: 1) evaluate the completeness of a novel multi- year data linkage developed for the purposes of this study using records supplied by the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (state paid family leave records), the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (vital birth and death records), and Colorado Department of Human Services (child protection records); 2) estimate factors that predict the use of state paid family leave, leveraging linked data at the person level; and 3) estimate the causal effect of state paid family leave on family violence indicators during infancy using a county-level difference-in-differences research design. Together, these aims will inform state and federal conversations about paid family leave and assist agencies in the upstream prevention of violence. The proposed research study addresses two research priorities of the CDC National Center for Injury Prevention and Control—specifically, the evaluation of (1) economic supports to families to prevent maltreatment, and (2) promising IPV prevention strategies. The PI aims to obtain formal training in causal effects study design while expanding her expertise to encompass more forms of cross-cutting violence. The PI will work with an interdisciplinary team of mentors who are internationally recognized experts in family violence prevention, causal inference, and the linkage and analysis of population-based, administrative records. The research and training proposed will provide the PI with the foundation she needs to become a future leader in the field of violence prevention whose research findings contribute to policy development on a national and global scale. The results of this study will support an R01 proposal to evaluate the synergistic effects of numerous policies that support and economically strengthen families to prevent cross-cutting violence, a CDC Injury Center research priority.