Nadine Kaslow, PhD, Emory psychologist and professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory, has learned a lot about Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) over the last two decades. In the 1990’s, Kaslow began the development of a program that was eventually named the “Nia Project.â€
Nia is a counseling program for abused and suicidal African American women, funded by grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institute of Mental Health. The name comes from the Kwanzaa term that means “purpose.”
Nia serves countless numbers of abused (click site for information on domestic abuse) and suicidal women who come through Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital’s emergency department each year. The women come in with black eyes, broken bones, and broken spirits, often inflicted by the people who are supposed to love them the most: their husbands, boyfriends and partners.
According to the CDC, Intimate Partner violence resulted in more than 1,500 deaths in the United States in 2005. Statistics from the Commission on Domestic Violence show that African American females experienced intimate partner violence at a rate 35 percent higher than that of white females, and about 22 times the rate of women of other races. The number one killer of African American women ages 15 to 34 is homicide at the hands of a current or former intimate partner.