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Using AI to investigate publicly available documents on violence prevention

 

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are increasingly applied in public health, yet their use for analysing fragmented, multi-sectoral policy landscapes remains underdeveloped. Many applications have focused on service delivery, such as AI-powered chatbots, data surveillance and monitoring, and tracking social media interactions for emerging risks, with less attention paid to how AI might support policy analysis. This is especially true for the violence prevention sector, where AI is gaining traction as a solution for triaging help-seeking calls, detecting threatening messages, predicting conflict and improving police data, but not for understanding the policy landscape.

Policy responses to violence are undergoing scrutiny in the UK, coinciding with the recent publication of an updated cross-government strategy addressing violence against women and girls. This renewed focus places increased demands on researchers and policymakers to rapidly synthesise large and fragmented bodies of policy evidence spanning multiple sectors and both local and national government. Traditional approaches to policy review formed around a wholly manual approach may struggle to meet these demands within policy-relevant timeframes.

This research, an exploratory, proof-of-concept case study, aimed to describe the development and preliminary exploration of an AI-enabled tool designed to synthesise evidence from violence-related policy documents in the UK. The team was led by VISION Research Fellow Dr Darren Cook and inlcuded several members from the wider VISION consortium, Dr Elizabeth Cook, Kimberly Cullen, Professor Sally McManus, Professor Gene Feder and Professor Mark Bellis. 

For their article, Artificial intelligence in critical synthesis of public health responses to violence: A novel application to UK violence prevention policy, the team compiled a corpus of publicly available UK policy and strategy documents on violence (N = 343) through expert review, manual searches of government and third sector organisation websites, and automated web scraping.

Then, they used the corpus to train an existing AI framework and deployed it through a question-answer interface. Stakeholders working in violence prevention (academics, practitioners in specialist services and government officials) were invited to pose natural-language questions about violence policy and consider the system’s utility and the usefulness of its outputs. Their feedback indicated that the AI generated reports were well-grounded in the underlying source documents. Syntheses aligned closely with the documents in the tool, and the inclusion of document references and page-level citations supported credibility assessments. Corpus coverage statistics were considered particularly helpful when judging the robustness of responses. 

This research contributes by documenting the early application of an AI-enabled tool designed to support exploratory policy analysis. The team illustrates an emerging analytic capability and its potential role within policy-oriented research workflows. By demonstrating how a document-grounded, closed-domain AI system can be used to interrogate policy framings and identify potential siloes, this work addresses a gap in current public health applications of AI, specifically in the context of violence prevention.

To access the VISION AI tool to ask your own questions about violence prevention: VISION: Violence, Health & Society  

To download the paper: Artificial intelligence in critical synthesis of public health responses to violence: A novel application to UK violence prevention policy

To cite: Cook, D., Cook, E., Cullen, K., Zachos, K., McManus, S., Feder, G., Bellis, M., Maiden, N. Artificial intelligence in critical synthesis of public health responses to violence: A novel application to UK violence prevention policy. Science Direct (2026). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-026-00272-2

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The establishment of the National Working Group on Teenage Relationship Abuse

Teenage relationship abuse remains one of the least understood forms of domestic abuse, particularly among those under 16 years of age, who fall outside the statutory definition within the 2021 Domestic Abuse Act.

To close the gap between research, policy, and frontline practice and ensure that young people are no longer overlooked, VISION researcher and co-Deputy Director of the Violence and Society Centre at City St George’s, Dr Ruth Weir, co-established the National Working Group on Teenage Relationship Abuse with Gloucestershire Deputy Chief Constable Katy Barrow-Grint in 2024. The group consists of researchers, practitioners, policymakers, third sector organisations, and young people with lived experience of teenage abuse from across the health and justice sectors for a holistic understanding of the problem.

Membership has grown over the two years and now includes the Home Office, Department for Education, the Cabinet Office, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s Office, College of Policing, local government (Islington Council), universities (City St George’s, Essex, Lancashire), NHS bodies, multiple police forces such as Thames Valley and the London Metropolitan Police, school trusts, and charities like SafeLives, Respect, Youth Realities, Changing Relations, and Victim Support just to name a few.

The group brings their expertise to shape ongoing national conversations on how teenage relationship abuse is defined, recognised, and responded to, particularly for those under 16.

Please contact Ruth at ruth.weir@citystgeorges.ac.uk for further information.

VISION presenting at the Prevention Research 2026 conference

Nine VISION colleagues have had workshop, symposium and individual abstracts accepted at the upcoming Prevention Research 2026 conference in March. The Population Health Improvement UK and the National Institute for Health and Care Research, in partnership with VISION funder, the UK Prevention Research Partnership, organised the event to explore the latest research and collaborative strategies for preventing non-communicable diseases and reducing health inequalities across the UK. This year’s theme is Connecting Research, Policy, and Practice for Health Equity.

VISION research is interdisciplinary and as such, several colleagues collaborated on symposiums and the workshop. We are partnering with Groundswell, Kailo and PHI UK Population Mental Health as well as the Violence, Abuse and Mental Health Network,  and High Trees Community Development Trust amongst others.

 

Individual presentation

Violence across the life course and physical and mental health trajectories in later life

  • Anastasia Fadeeva, VISION Research Fellow, City St George’s University of London

 

Symposiums

Lessons Learned from Lived Experience Engagement in Violence and Trauma Research

  • Sian Oram, Professor at Kings College London and VISION Co-Investigator
  • Kimberly Cullen, VISION Knowledge Exchange Manager, City St George’s UoL
  • Alicia Stillman, Violence, Abuse and Mental Health Network at Kings College London
  • Polina Obolenskaya, VISION Research Fellow, City St George’s UoL
  • Annie Bunce, VISION Research Fellow, City St George’s UoL

Policy insights from a population understanding of mental health inequalities: using England’s mental health survey series, the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Surveys (APMS)

Presenters include:

  • Sally McManus, Professor at City St George’s UoL and VISION Co-Deputy Director
  • Elizabeth Cook, Senior Lecturer at City St George’s UoL and VISION Co-Investigator

Centring the voices of young people – Learning from four participatory, place-based approaches to violence prevention

Presenters include:

  • Elizabeth Cook, Senior Lecturer at City St George’s UoL and VISION Co-Investigator
  • Ruth Weir, VISION Senior Research Fellow at City St George’s UoL

Understudied Commercial Drivers of Health: Exploring Industry Practices & Developing a Prevention Research Agenda

  • Presenters include Sally McManus, Professor at City St George’s UoL and VISION Co-Deputy Director

 

Workshop

Using Systems Approaches to Connect Communities and Tackle Complexity in Prevention

  • Workshop leads include Olumide Adisa, VISION Co-Investigator at City St George’s UoL

“How are young people supposed to stay safe when we have nowhere safe to go?”

 

VISION was pleased to support the Lambeth Peer Action Collective (LPAC) with funding and mentoring in their recent project, Built on Trust: The role of youth spaces and trusted adults in reducing young people’s exposure to violence. Working at the community level and with young adults was inspiring – and the impact was powerful particularly for Dr Elizabeth (Lizzie) Cook, Dr Estela Capelas Barbosa and Dr Alexandria (Andri) Innes, the mentors. Many congratulations to High Trees, LPAC and their partners for the hard work and brilliant report. Please read the blog below, written by the young adults who conducted the research and wrote and delivered their report which can also be found below. They are an amazing group!

 

“How are young people supposed to stay safe when we have nowhere safe to go?”

 

by Anisa Hassan on behalf of the Lambeth Peer Action Collective

 

The Lambeth Peer Action Collective (LPAC) recently published their newest research Built on Trust: The role of youth spaces and trusted adults in reducing young people’s exposure to violence. LPAC was launched by High Trees Community Development Trust in 2021. It’s made up of young people and six local youth organisations working together to create better futures for young people in Lambeth through youth-led research and social action.

What was the research about?

This round of research explored what can be done to reduce young people’s risk of experiencing violence. With the support of High Trees, VISION, Partisan and other LPAC partners, we worked on this project for nearly 18 months, conducting and analysing 46 peer interviews. We found that with access to trusted adults and trusted spaces young people were less likely to be exposed to different types of violence.

This produced four key findings:

  1. The violence affecting young people takes many forms and is often complex in nature.
  2. Youth organisations provide unique spaces where young people can feel safe and build belonging.
  3. When youth practitioners can build trust with young people, they are able to provide them with practical and emotional support to navigate violence.
  4. Youth organisations offer young people alternative pathways and visions for their future.

An afternoon of conversation and community

The launch event was a chance for the LPAC team to connect and show stakeholders and community members our research, get feedback and start to think about how we can work together to make change. Attendees described the event as “hopeful”, “inspiring”, and “empowering”, with many of them pledging support. The team left the event with hope for the next phase of the project – social action that builds long-lasting change for young people in our communities.

What’s next?

“No research without action”

Since the research launch in October, the LPAC team have been busy, taking action in response to our findings.

We were invited to the Lambeth Safeguarding Children Partnership’s Annual Conference to present our research findings to organisations at the forefront of protecting young people. This event gave us an opportunity to highlight key insights from our research and how they can shape safeguarding practices and policies.

We have also been designing our own trusted adult training workshop, which takes inspiration from interviews with young people focusing on characteristics and practical advice that youth practitioners can use to build and maintain trust. We are planning to trial the training with local youth workers early next year.

LPAC team members have also attended workshops hosted by the Met Police and the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC), where we had the opportunity to ask questions and make suggestions about their MPS Children’s Strategy based on young pe  ople’s experiences that they told us about through our research.

LPAC at High Trees were thrilled to win the Power of Community award at the Locality Awards 2025 in Liverpool. The award celebrates community organisations working with local people to shape their own future and to build a fairer society where everyone in the community thrives.

We are also proud to announce that in the new year LPAC will be starting a new round of research, funded by the Youth Endowment Fund, focusing on mental health support for young people affected by violence, and we are excited to continue our collaboration with VISION on this project.

If you’re interested in finding out more about LPAC’s work visit www.lambethpac.com  or get in touch with us on action@high-trees.org.

Photographs provided by LPAC.

Conference: The intersection of public health & violence prevention

 

Wednesday 4 February 2026, 10 am – 4:30 pm, Leonardo Hotel, Cardiff, CF10 3UD

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

The UKPRP VISION research consortium and the Violence Prevention team at Public Health Wales are pleased to collaborate on a free, one-day conference, The intersection of public health and violence prevention.

This event will bring together a range of stakeholders working in violence prevention including public health, policing, healthcare, academia, government and the community and voluntary sector. It will showcase professionals from across Wales and beyond who are working at this intersection, with a focus on whole system approaches to violence prevention and the role of public health within this, as well as examining data on violence and its links with health inequalities. Join us for presentations, panel discussions and plenty of opportunities for questions and networking. 

For any questions, please contact VISION_Management_Team@citystgeorges.ac.uk

REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

We look forward to seeing you in Cardiff soon! Violence Prevention Team and VISION Consortium

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COFRESTRU AR AGOR NAWR: Y Croestoriad rhwng Iechyd y Cyhoedd ac Atal Trais

Rydym wrth ein bodd yn eich gwahodd i gynhadledd Croestoriad rhwng Iechyd y Cyhoedd ac Atal Trais, a gynhelir ar y cyd gan Gonsortiwm Trais, Iechyd a Chymdeithas (VISION) Partneriaeth Ymchwil Atal y DU a’r Tîm Atal Trais yn Iechyd Cyhoeddus Cymru.

Pryd: Dydd Mercher 4 Chwefror 2026 10:00am – 4:30pm

Ble: Gwesty Leonardo, Caerdydd, CF10 3UD

COFRESTRWCH YMA

Bydd y gynhadledd undydd, rhad ac am ddim hon yn dwyn ynghyd amrywiaeth o randdeiliaid sy’n gweithio ym maes atal trais gan gynnwys iechyd y cyhoedd, plismona, gofal iechyd, y byd academaidd, y llywodraeth a’r sector cymunedol a gwirfoddol. Bydd yn arddangos gweithwyr proffesiynol o bob cwr o Gymru a thu hwnt sy’n gweithio yn y groesffordd hon, gyda ffocws ar ddulliau system gyfan o atal trais a rôl iechyd y cyhoedd yn hyn, yn ogystal ag archwilio data ar drais a’r cysylltiad rhyngddo ag anghydraddoldebau iechyd.

Ymunwch â ni am gyflwyniadau, trafodaethau panel a digon o gyfleoedd ar gyfer gofyn cwestiynau a rhwydweithio.

Edrychwn ymlaen at eich croesawu ar 4 Chwefror. Anfonwch e-bost at phw.violencepreventionteam@wales.nhs.uk os oes gennych gwestiynau.

COFRESTRWCH YMA

Edrychwn ymlaen at eich gweld yng Nghaerdydd yn fuan! Tîm Atal Trais a Chonsortiwm VISION

Conference programme in English and Welsh to download

Intersection of public health and violence prevention_Programme_E and W

Conference breakout session abstracts in English and Welsh to download

Intersection of public health and violence prevention_Abstracts_E and W

Conference bios of the keynote, chairs and presenters in English and Welsh to download

Intersection of public health and violence prevention_Bios_E and W

Call for Abstracts: The intersection of public health and violence prevention

 

Opportunity to present at
‘The Intersection of Public Health and Violence Prevention’ conference in 2026

The call is now closed.

The VISION research consortium and the Violence Prevention Team at Public Health Wales are pleased to collaborate on a free, one-day conference. The theme is the intersection of public health and violence prevention in February 2026.

Bringing together a range of stakeholders working in violence prevention including public health, policing, healthcare, academia, government and the community and voluntary sector, we are keen to showcase academics and public health professionals from Wales and beyond who are working at this intersection.

We are currently designing the agenda and are looking for additional participation along these themes:

  1. Exploring or addressing the structural determinants of violence through a public health lens, with a focus on research, policy or partnerships
  2. Sharing innovative, evidence-based practice by highlighting approaches, cross-sector collaboration, or lessons learned that can inform practice, policy, or future research in violence prevention
  3. Exploring the role of lived experience in research and ethical considerations.

Presenters will have a maximum of 20 minutes to present, including time for questions or discussion. We welcome interactive presentations or workshops.

Presentation summaries must be a maximum of 300 words and are due by 17 December at 5 pm. Please email Word documents and any questions to PHW.Violencepreventionteam@wales.nhs.uk

Registration will be open soon and announced on this webpage, via networks, and on the VISION LinkedIn page.  For any questions about registration, please contact VISION_Management_Team@citystgeorges.ac.uk

Systematic review: Effectiveness of UK-based adult domestic and sexual violence support interventions and services

Recommendations

  • Further high-quality research into the effectiveness of domestic and sexual violence and abuse (DVSA) interventions and evaluations of perpetrator programmes are required, including randomised controlled studies where appropriate and ethical, to improve certainty regarding the effect estimates generated from evidence syntheses. Published protocols, adherence to reporting guidelines, such as CONSORT, STROBE and SQUIRE 2.0, and considering and accounting for confounding factors where randomisation is not feasible, will strengthen the research.
  • Developing a core outcome set via co-production with survivors, practitioners and service providers, commissioners, policy makers and researchers will increase consistency in reported outcomes and create the cohesion necessary to develop a robust evidence base to aid understanding of how effective various support services are.

In the United Kingdom, there are a range of support services and interventions for people who have experienced domestic and sexual violence and abuse (DSVA), including refuges, advocacy such as Independent Domestic Violence Advisors (IDVAs), referral, outreach, and helplines. These are often provided by the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS), although may also be located in the public or private sector. Due to the lack of consensus on outcomes used to assess effectiveness, evidence syntheses in this field have been limited.

Dr Sophie Carlisle led a team of VISION researchers, Dr Annie Bunce, Prof Sally McManus, Dr Estela Capelas Barbosa, Prof Gene Feder, and Dr Natalia V Lewis, and Prof Matthew Prina from Kings College London. They used findings from their scoping review to identify the common reported outcomes, to direct and inform an evidence synthesis on the effectiveness of UK-based interventions and services for DSVA.

The team conducted a systematic review and, where possible, meta-analysis. They searched relevant peer reviewed and grey literature sources. The following were included: randomised controlled trials, non-randomised comparative studies, pre-post studies, and service evaluations of support interventions or services for adults who had experienced or perpetrated DSVA. The intervention typology and selection of outcomes was determined based on co-production with stakeholders from specialist DSVA organisations. The quality of the studies was assessed independently by two reviewers. Where meta-analysis was not possible, the researchers synthesized studies with vote counting based on the direction of effect.

The review demonstrates that there appear to be benefits of UK-based advocacy and outreach services, psychological support interventions, and perpetrator programmes. However, risk of bias and methodological heterogeneity means that there is uncertainty regarding the estimated effects.

A co-produced core-outcome set is needed to develop a more robust evidence base and facilitate future research in this field. Research practices such as publishing of study protocols, following reporting guidelines and, for research where randomisation is not feasible, considering and accounting for potential confounding factors, would greatly improve the quality of research.

To download the paper: Effectiveness of UK-based support interventions and services aimed at adults who have experienced or used domestic and sexual violence and abuse: a systematic review and meta-analysis – PMC

To cite: Carlisle S, Bunce A, Prina M, McManus S, Barbosa E, Feder G, Lewis NV. Effectiveness of UK-based support interventions and services aimed at adults who have experienced or used domestic and sexual violence and abuse: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Public Health. 2025 Mar 14;25(1):1003. doi: 10.1186/s12889-025-21891-5. PMID: 40087589; PMCID: PMC11908015.

For further information, please contact Sophie at sophie.carlisle4@nhs.net

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VISION Policy Briefing: Domestic violence and abuse and mental and physical health

Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) is prevalent within the United Kingdom (UK) and has severe and long-lasting physical and mental health consequences. An estimated 2.3 million adults in England and Wales (4.8%) experienced domestic abuse in the past 12 months. More women than men experience DVA, and women experience more repeated abuse, more physical, sexual, and emotional violence and coercive control, more injuries, and greater fear.

We, in the VISION research consortium, investigate how DVA is related to health. This policy briefing summarises evidence from five of our recent publications. We highlight the key recommendation resulting from across the research and discuss the key findings and evidence demonstrating the prevalence of DVA and the need for a cross-government approach to violence prevention.

Key Recommendation

A cross-government approach to preventing violence needs to include health services, alongside justice, welfare, education and other sectors. An effective and safe NHS response to survivors of domestic violence needs to be implemented. That response, embedded in training for healthcare professionals and referral to appropriate services, stretches from identification of survivors to initial support, to addressing the mental health and other sequelae of violence. Currently, the response is sporadic and patchy, with many Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) not commissioning necessary services. Integrated commissioning, as recommended in the NICE guidelines, could help bridge silos and sectors. 

Key findings

  • Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) affects the physical and mental health of victim-survivors.
  • About half of people who attempted suicide in the past year had experienced violence from a partner at some point in their life, and one in four experienced violence from a partner in the preceding year 
  • The type of intimate partner relationship and the type of violence and abuse affects the nature and level of physical and mental health consequences. 
  • People who use violence against their partners also tend to have worse mental health, and mental health services present an opportunity for intervention with this group. 

To download the paper: VISION Policy Briefing: Domestic violence and abuse and mental and physical health

To cite: Blom, N., Davies, E., Hashemi, L., Obolenskaya, P., Bhavsar, V., & McManus, S. (2025). VISION Policy Briefing: Domestic violence and abuse and mental and physical health. City St George’s, University of London. https://doi.org/10.25383/city.28653212.v3

For further information, please contact Niels at niels.blom@manchester.ac.uk

Call for Frontiers in Sociology abstracts: Enhancing data collection and integration to Reduce health harms and inequalities linked to violence

Frontiers in Sociology is currently welcoming submissions of original research for the following research topic: Enhancing Data Collection and Integration to Reduce Health Harms and Inequalities Linked to Violence.

This edition is guest-edited by Dr Estela Capelas Barbosa (University of Bristol and the UKPRP VISION research consortium), Dr Annie Bunce (City St. George’s, UoL and the UKPRP VISION research consortium), and Katie Smith (City St. George’s, UoL / University of Bristol).

Submissions should focus on any of the following:

  • advancing measurement approaches which emphasise cross-sector harmonisation to better evaluate interventions, address health inequalities, and reduce violence
  • addressing any form of violence (e.g., physical, non-physical, technology-facilitated) and its impacts on health, social and economic well-being, and marginalised groups, considering intersections of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, and religion

Research using existing datasets or primary data (quantitative or qualitative), cross-sectoral and cross-disciplinary approaches (e.g., sociology, criminology, public health), and lived experience perspectives is encouraged.

Contributions may include conceptual reviews, methodological innovations, empirical studies and systematic reviews on themes such as health inequalities, intervention effectiveness, outcome measurement, data harmonisation, and linkage strategies.

Abstracts are due by 7th April 2025, and the deadline for manuscripts is 28th July 2025.

For details of the different article types accepted and associated costs, please follow this link https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sociology/for-authors/publishing-fees.

For more information and to submit an abstract or manuscript, please use the “I’m interested” link below or visit the Research Topic page here https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/67291/enhancing-data-collection-and-integration-to-reduce-health-harms-and-inequalities-linked-to-violence. 

This special edition provides an excellent opportunity to advance knowledge in this critical area. Please do reach out and contact us if you have any questions: annie.bunce@city.ac.uk

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Positive experiences can mitigate negative effects in children with trauma

Children with traumatic experiences in their early lives have a higher risk of obesity. But as new research from VISION researcher Dr Ladan Hashemi and colleagues at University of Auckland, New Zealand, demonstrate, this risk can be reduced through positive experiences.

Their analysis of data from around 5,000 children in the Growing Up in New Zealand study revealed nine out of ten faced at least one significant source of trauma by the time they were eight years old. Multiple adverse experiences were also prevalent, with one in three children experiencing at least three traumatic events. Notably, certain traumatic experiences (including physical abuse and parental domestic violence) related more strongly to obesity than others. This highlights the strong connection between early-life adversity and physical health outcomes.

Whilst researching the associations between obesity and childhood trauma, the team also explored the protective and mitigating effects of positive experiences. They defined positive experiences as:

  • mothers interacting well with their children
  • mothers involved in social groups
  • children engaged in enriching experiences and activities such as visiting libraries or museums and participating in sports and community events
  • children living in households with routines and rules, including those regulating bedtime, screen time and mealtimes
  • children attending effective early childhood education

The findings were encouraging. Children with more positive experiences were significantly less likely to be obese by age eight. For example, those with five or six positive experiences were 60% less likely to be overweight or obese compared to children with zero or one positive experience. Even two positive experiences reduced the likelihood by a quarter.

Among children exposed to multiple adversities, positive experiences can help mitigate the negative effects of childhood trauma. However, at least four positive experiences were required to significantly counteract the impact of adverse experiences.

Recommendations

  • Traditional weight-loss programmes focused solely on changing behaviours are not enough to tackle childhood obesity. To create lasting change, children need positive social environments and life experiences as well as support to address the emotional scars of early trauma shaping their lives.
  • Fostering positive experiences is a vital part of this holistic approach. These experiences not only help protect children from the harmful effects of adversity but also promote their overall physical and mental wellbeing. This isn’t just about preventing obesity – it’s about giving children the foundation to thrive and reach their full potential.
  • Sure Start and providers of early childhood education and support for parents could help reduce the health inequalities resulting from exposure to violence.

To download the paper: Identification of positive childhood experiences with the potential to mitigate childhood unhealthy weight status in children within the context of adverse childhood experiences: a prospective cohort study | BMC Public Health

To cite: Mellar, B.M., Ghasemi, M., Gulliver, P. et al. Identification of positive childhood experiences with the potential to mitigate childhood unhealthy weight status in children within the context of adverse childhood experiences: a prospective cohort study. BMC Public Health 25, 8 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-20727-y

For further information on the research:

Or for further information, please contact Ladan at ladan.hashemi@city.ac.uk

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