Sexual and Gender-Based Violence - A Complete Clinical Guide

This book is an accessible guide to caring for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV). Sexual violence is broadly defined in order to include sexual assault, but also often forgotten subjects such as female genital cutting, sex trafficking, and military sexual violence. The average practitioner, gynecologist or otherwise, will undoubtedly encounter a victim of some sexual violence during their time in practice and this guide is designed to answer all questions on how to approach, treat, and understand a survivor of sexual violence.
 
Written by a multidisciplinary team of medical, psychological, and legal experts, the book is organized into four sections. The first section begins with a scholarly analysis of trauma and how to discuss that trauma with patients. The second section covers types of violence and populations at risk, including intimate partner violence, sex trafficking, and LGBTQ considerations. The third section provides critical focus on the examination procedure, providing strategies for speaking to survivors and conducting a sensitive medical examination. Within each of these chapters, the reader will find experts sharing their tips, best practices, and understandings of exactly how trauma affects care. The final section covers medicolegal legal issues, providing a basic introduction to general legal processes regarding sexual violence matters in the US in order to serve as a resource for any practitioner presented with legal questions by a patient.
 
This book gives a comprehensive overview of clinical care for survivors of SGBV. The clinical focus of this book goes beyond emergency room and crisis intervention protocol described in other books and makes it an ideal guide for all general health practitioners treating this population. 



Veronica Ades, MD, MPH is an Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Director of Global Women's Health at the New York University Langone Medical Center (NYULMC). She is also the Director of the EMPOWER Clinic for Survivors of Sex Trafficking and Sexual Violence at Gouverneur Health on the Lower East Side. She attended medical school at the State University of New York at Downstate in Brooklyn, NY, and obtained residency training in obstetrics and gynecology at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx, NY. She then obtained a Master of Public Health with a concentration in Quantitative Methods at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Ades then completed a three-year fellowship in Reproductive Infectious Disease at the University of California, San Francisco, during which she lived and worked in rural Uganda. During her fellowship, Dr. Ades carried out an NIH/NICHD-funded P01 randomized controlled trial of malaria prevention in HIV-infected women, and conducted research on prevention of protease inhibitors for placental malaria prevention in HIV-infected and -uninfected women. Dr. Ades also obtained a Certificate in Comparative Effectiveness from New York University School of Medicine.