Trauma-Informed Personalized Scripts to Address Partner Violence and Reproductive Coercion: Follow-Up Findings from an Implementation Randomized Controlled Trial Study

Abstract

Background: Intimate partner violence (IPV) and reproductive coercion impact women seeking care at family planning (FP) clinics. Interventions to facilitate patient-provider conversations about healthy relationships are needed. We sought to determine the added effect of providing psychoeducational messages to patients compared with tailored provider scripts alone on sexual and reproductive health outcomes at 4-6 months. Materials and Methods: We randomized participants to Trauma-Informed Personalized Scripts (TIPS)-Plus (provider scripts +patient messages) or TIPS-Basic (provider scripts only) at four FP clinics. Eligible patients included English-speaking females aged 16-29 years. Data were collected at initial visits (T1) and 4-6 months (T2) on IPV, reproductive coercion, fear, condom and other contraceptive use, self-efficacy, harm reduction behaviors, and knowledge/use of IPV-related services. We compared frequencies and summary scores between baseline and follow-up with McNemar's test of paired proportions and Signed Rank-Sum, respectively. We compared the difference in differences over time by treatment arm using two-sample t-tests, and used linear, logistic, and ordinal logistic regression to compare intervention effects at follow-up. Results: Two hundred forty patients participated (114 TIPS-Plus, 126 TIPS-Basic), 216 completed follow-up. We detected no differences in outcomes between treatment arms. Between T1 and T2, we observed overall reductions in mean summary scores for reproductive coercion (T1 = 0.08 ± 0.02, T2 = 0.02 ± 0.01, p = 0.028) and increases in contraceptive use (69.6%-87.9%, p < 0.001), long-acting reversible contraceptives (8.3%-20.8%, p < 0.001), and hidden methods (20%-38.5%, p < 0.001). Conclusions: We show no added benefit of patient-activation messages compared with provider scripts alone. Findings suggest potential utility of provider scripts in addressing reproductive coercion and contraceptive uptake (Trial Registration No. NCT02782728).

Keywords: IPV; family planning; implementation; primary care; reproductive coercion.

Conflict of interest statement

No competing financial interests exist.

Figures

FIG. 1.

Flow Diagram of the Trauma-Informed Personalized Scripts (TIPS) Trial. FP, family planning.