Investigating links between adverse and protective childhood contexts and violence later in life: Analysis of cohort data in England, Brazil & Uganda

Lead Research Organisation: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Department Name: Public Health and Policy

Abstract

Over one billion children experience physical, sexual or emotional violence every year and social inequalities in violence are large. The contexts children live, learn and play in can shape their health, employment, and educational outcomes. This project will generate new evidence on how adverse and protective childhood contexts affect children's use, or experiences of, interpersonal violence as they grow up.

We propose to draw on high-quality longitudinal data about children's lives, including experiences of violence, in three independent cohort studies in Brazil (birth to late childhood), England (birth to adulthood) and Uganda (late childhood to adulthood). Our multi-country research team consists of social epidemiologists and social scientists with strong links to the settings of each cohort study. To ensure analyses and findings are informed by a wide range of expertise and experiences we will consult local stakeholders (young people, civil society organisations, health workers and local government staff) in each study setting and researchers from different disciplines during research design and dissemination.

The World Health Organisation's (WHO) INSPIRE framework recommends changing laws, social norms, social safety nets, neighbourhood environments, households, and schools to prevent interpersonal violence. To advance such prevention efforts, violence researchers and practitioners need to know how childhood contexts shape violence later in life, and how contexts can interrupt or prevent violence later in life. Further, we need to understand if the adverse or protective effects of contexts differ for marginalised young people.

The first phase of this project will define and operationalise contextual measures: we theorise that adverse childhood contexts are homes, schools, and neighbourhoods with violence and deprivation, and protective childhood contexts high social connectedness and support. We will use data collected on contexts to operationalise contextual measures specific to each cohort and refine measures based on input from local stakeholders, young people, and researchers in each context. Findings from this phase will highlight new opportunities to apply advanced statistical methods to improve how contexts are measured and defined in violence research.

The second phase will test whether adverse childhood contexts increase the risk of violence later in life, and whether protective childhood contexts can mitigate this risk. We aim to conduct causal analyses of longitudinal data to uncover, for example, whether neighbourhood violence and deprivation in childhood could increase interpersonal physical or sexual violence years later - and whether a protective home environment at the same time, or later in life could prevent or interrupt these associations. Findings from this phase provide evidence for developing and situating contextual interventions to prevent violence as children grow up.

The third and final phase of the project will explore how the effects of contexts differ for young people from historically marginalised groups. By applying statistical methods to test if the adverse and protective effects of contexts differ by gender, disability, ethnicity, sexuality, and socioeconomic position, findings will highlight which young people are disproportionately impacted by adverse contexts or less likely to benefit from protective contexts.

Our approach offers opportunities to improve the use of contextual measures in research on violence and more broadly. Violence prevention efforts at contextual levels shift the loci of intervention away from the individual and are likely to benefit more people than individual-level behaviour change interventions. This research will generate new evidence from multiple countries that researchers and practitioners can use to realise the WHO INSPIRE framework on violence prevention and the Sustainable Development Goals related to violence.

Publications

10 25 50
 
Description MRC London Intercollegiate Doctoral Training Partnership Studentships
Amount £140,000 (GBP)
Organisation London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) 
Department Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health
Sector Academic/University
Country United Kingdom
Start 01/2024 
End 01/2028
 
Title School-level contextual measures of violence 
Description A dataset of school-level contextual measures of violence based on the CoVAC study and data from over 40 schools in Luwero, Uganda. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2024 
Provided To Others? No  
Impact These data will be combined with individual-level data to explore the role of school contexts on trajectories of violence 
 
Description Analysis workshops 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact A group of epidemiologists from Uganda, UK and Brazil met regularly to learn new approaches and share insights about the analysis of violence data.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024