The science of safety
Relationship abuse is often complex and dangerous, making it difficult for survivors to make decisions while juggling competing priorities. Individualized safety planning with a trained domestic violence advocate is the cornerstone of intimate partner violence interventions. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people with an abusive partner do not access these services, representing significant missed opportunities to reduce violence and its negative consequences. Technology can bridge this gap.
myPlan is the result of multiple research studies to develop an evidence-based tool that expands access to individualized safety planning. The app was designed with survivors, advocates, and healthcare providers using:
Decision-making science
myPlan is a “decision aid”- an evidence-based approach used in health care to assist people to make complicated and difficult treatment decisions. DV survivors are making complex decisions every day, and myPlan offers a tool for survivors to decide how to stay safest, privately and judgement-free.
Risk assessment frameworks
myPlan includes The Danger Assessment - a research-validated tool for people to determine if their partner is putting them at risk for severe or lethal violence and informs safety planning needs.
The empowerment model:
A model of practice that informs domestic violence advocacy and safety planning services- treating survivors as the experts in their own lives and equipping them with autonomy, control, and choice.
Backed by research
myPlan was developed through a series of focus groups, interviews, human centered design sessions, and research studies with domestic violence survivors, friends/family of survivors, advocates, service providers, and healthcare professionals. It was the first domestic violence app to be effectiveness tested in a randomized controlled trial. Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing along with colleagues across the country conducted two longitudinal research trials to test the effectiveness of using myPlan compared to using a standard online safety plan with over 1000 survivors.
Promising Results
DV survivors who use myPlan report…
Increased use of helpful safety strategies
Reduced decisional conflict
With increased clarity about options, risks, and priorities users felt more supported in making decisions to increase safety
Increased likelihood of safely ending a dangerous relationship
*Compared to a control group using a standard, static online safety plan.
Developed by survivors for survivors
Many people who work in the DV field have chosen to do so because they have been impacted by abuse in their own lives. Our team is no different. In addition to our own professional and lived experience expertise, during every stage of myPlan’s development and testing we centered lived experience experts including DV survivors, friends of survivors, and relationship violence advocates. Over 1000 survivors participated in our research studies to test the effectiveness of myPlan.
Our Team
Dr. Nancy Glass PhD, MPH, RN
myPlan was founded by Dr. Nancy Glass, a Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health. Dr. Glass is a global gender-based violence (GBV) expert with over 25 years of experience developing and evaluating community, clinic, and digital interventions to prevent and respond to GBV and it’s consequences.
Amber Clough, MSW
Amber Clough is the myPlan program director. She has over 20 years of experience in compassionate IPV advocacy, trauma-informed intervention and evaluation implementation in community, clinic, campus, and humanitarian settings, and expertise in digital product development that centers survivor safety and well-being.
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Nancy Perrin, PhD
Jackie Campbell, PhD, RN
Karen Eden, PhD
Rachael Turner, MPH
Tina Bloom, PhD, MPH, RN
Kamila Alexander, PhD, MSN/MPH, RN
Ginger Hanson, PhD
Jill Messing, PhD, MSW
Andrea Gielen, ScD, ScM
James Case, MBI
Megan Lindsay-Brown, PhD, MSW
Jamie Barnes-Hoyt, MS
Karen Grace, MSN, CNM
Thank you to all the other contributors, students, domestic violence advocates, and most importantly, survivors who have given their time and expertise to the development of myPlan.
myPlan in the media
Featured on ABC13 Houston news segment
