The science of safety
Relationship abuse is often complex and dangerous, making it difficult for survivors to make decisions while juggling competing priorities. Safety planning is the cornerstone of intimate partner violence interventions and is ideally an individualized process, taking into account each survivor’s unique situation.
Safety planning is most frequently accessed through traditional support services like DV hotlines, shelters, and domestic violence programs, yet the vast majority of abuse survivors never access these services, representing significant missed opportunities to reduce violence and its negative consequences. Therefore, myPlan was developed to expand access to safety planning.
Backed by research
In 2010, Johns Hopkins University developed and tested an early computerized version of the decision aid in domestic violence shelters. Survivors reported that the tool offered privacy to consider personalized safety options, informed them about danger in their relationship, and provided useful safety planning and resource information. After the promising feedback from the pilot, the next 6 years were spent developing the tool further based on survivor and advocate feedback and the effectiveness of the tool was tested in 2 longitudinal randomized controlled trials with over 1000 survivors, friends, and advocates across the country.
Designed through a series of multi-year research studies conducted by Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, myPlan is the first interactive safety decision aid. The tool is accessible via a downloadable mobile app and web browser, and designed to assist intimate partner violence (IPV) survivors in identifying and navigating their own safe path forward.
Decision aids in health care settings have been shown to be effective in assisting patients to make difficult decisions about treatment options. By providing information and helping to clarify personal values, decision aids can assist someone to weigh risks and benefits to make informed decisions that impact their safety.
Developed by survivors for survivors
myPlan is the result of multiple research studies to develop and test a safety decision aid for effective use in different contexts relating to domestic abuse and intimate partner violence.
Using sound science, myPlan utilizes decision-making, risk assessment, and the empowerment framework that informs domestic violence advocacy and safety planning services. During every stage of myPlan’s development and testing, we centered lived experience experts, including DV survivors, friends of survivors, relationship violence advocates, and health providers. The effectiveness of myPlan was tested in multiple randomized controlled trials and contains the Danger Assessment, a validated risk assessment tool used for over 25 years by advocates, law enforcement, and other professionals.
DV survivors who use myPlan report…
Increased use of helpful safety strategies
Reduced decisional conflict
(e.g. increased clarity of priorities for safety, felt more supported in making a decision for safety)
Increased likelihood of safely ending a dangerous relationship
Our Team
Dr. Nancy Glass PhD, MPH, RN
myPlan is led by Dr. Nancy Glass, a Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, with a joint appointment at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health. Dr. Glass has over 20 years of intimate partner violence (IPV) experience across clinical and research settings, both domestically and globally. Her expertise is in developing and evaluating the effectiveness of innovative community-based interventions to prevent and address IPV, and its consequences, with diverse populations.
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Nancy Perrin, PhD
Jackie Campbell, PhD, RN
Karen Eden, PhD
Amber Clough, MSW
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
Rachael Turner, MPH
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
