(Boston)—Casey Taft, PhD, professor of psychiatry at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, has been awarded a $298,139 grant from Arnold Ventures to fund his 4-year project, “Evaluating Interventions for Intimate Partner Violence Use in Washington State.”
Intimate partner violence (IPV), specifically physical and psychological aggression toward an intimate partner, represents a public health crisis that affects millions of Americans each year. It contributes to a range of mental and physical health conditions in survivors. Children exposed to IPV are at an increased risk for psychological, social, emotional and behavioral problems, and are also more likely to engage in intimate partner violence later in life.
“Right now, no truly evidence-based intervention exists to prevent and end the perpetuation of IPV in the general population. Prior analyses show that those referred to IPV intervention programs demonstrate only a 7% reduction in criminal violence recidivism relative to untreated groups. This lack of demonstrated intervention effectiveness is troubling, considering that approximately half a million men and women are court mandated to more than 2,500 of these programs each year,” explains Taft, who also is an internationally recognized psychologist at the National Center for PTSD located at the VA Boston Healthcare System.
Using this grant money from Arnold Ventures, Taft and his team will compare the effectiveness of different interventions using data analysis to examine reductions in primary outcome of physical violence arrest recidivism, and secondary outcomes of self- and partner-reported physical and psychological IPV, PTSD symptoms, and alcohol use problems. Strength at Home, a program developed by Taft, which is focused on accountability, behavior change, and the reduction of IPV will be tested against “treatment as usual.”
Taft has served as principal investigator on funded grants focusing on understanding and preventing partner violence through the National Institute of Mental Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Centers for Disease Control, the Department of Defense, the Blue Shield Foundation of California, the Bob Woodruff Foundation and the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation. He was the primary developer of the Strength at Home programs to prevent intimate partner violence, with current grants to implement the program within civilian and military settings.
In 2025, he received the Barbara Thompson Excellence in Research on Military and Veteran Families Award for his military research paper, “Examining Strength at Home Couples to Prevent Intimate Partner Violence on a Military Installation: A Randomized Controlled Trial.”
Taft was the 2009 Linda Saltzman Memorial Intimate Partner Violence Researcher Award winner from the Institute on Violence, Abuse, and Trauma. He is on the editorial boards of five journals and has published over 150 peer-reviewed academic articles. He has chaired an American Psychological Association task force on trauma in the military, consulted with the United Nations on preventing violence and abuse globally and testified before the US Congress on preventing intimate partner violence in the military.
Arnold Ventures was founded in 2008 by Laura and John Arnold with the launch of a foundation. The philanthropy is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through evidence-based policy solutions that maximize opportunity and minimize injustice.