IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0230894.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Intimate partner violence: A key correlate of women’s physical and mental health in informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya

Author

Listed:
  • Samantha C Winter
  • Lena Moraa Obara
  • Sarah McMahon

Abstract

Globally, one billion people live in informal settlements, and that number is expected to triple by 2050. Studies suggests that health in informal settlements is a serious and growing concern, yet there is a paucity of research focused on health outcomes and the correlates of health in these settlements. Studies cite individual, environmental and social correlates to health in informal settlements, but they often lack empirical evidence. In particular, research suggests that high rates of violence against women (VAW) in informal settlements may be associated with detrimental effects on women’s health, but few studies have investigated this link. The purpose of this study was to fill this gap by empirically exploring associations between women’s experiences of intimate partner violence (IPV) and their physical and mental health. Data for this study were collected in August 2018 in Mathare Valley Informal Settlement in Nairobi, Kenya. A total of 550 randomly-selected women participated in surveys; however, analyses for this study were run on a subpopulation of the women (n = 361). Multivariate logistic regressions were used to investigate the link between psychological, sexual, and emotional IPV and women’s mental and physical health. Results suggest that while some socioeconomic, demographic, and environmental variables were significantly associated with women’s mental and physical health outcomes, all types of IPV emerged key correlates in this context. In particular, women’s experiences of IPV were associated with lower odds of normal-high physical health component scores (based on SF-36); higher odds of gynecological and reproductive health issues, psychological distress (based on K-10), depression, suicidality, and substance use. Findings from this study suggest that policies and interventions focused on prevention and response to VAW in informal settlements may make critical contributions to improving health for women in these rapidly growing settlements.

Suggested Citation

  • Samantha C Winter & Lena Moraa Obara & Sarah McMahon, 2020. "Intimate partner violence: A key correlate of women’s physical and mental health in informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(4), pages 1-18, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0230894
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230894
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0230894
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0230894&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0230894?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lucy S. Tusting & Donal Bisanzio & Graham Alabaster & Ewan Cameron & Richard Cibulskis & Michael Davies & Seth Flaxman & Harry S. Gibson & Jakob Knudsen & Charles Mbogo & Fredros O. Okumu & Lorenz Sei, 2019. "Mapping changes in housing in sub-Saharan Africa from 2000 to 2015," Nature, Nature, vol. 568(7752), pages 391-394, April.
    2. Andrew Gibbs & Kristin Dunkle & Rachel Jewkes, 2018. "Emotional and economic intimate partner violence as key drivers of depression and suicidal ideation: A cross-sectional study among young women in informal settlements in South Africa," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(4), pages 1-18, April.
    3. Owen O'Donnell & Eddy van Doorslaer & Adam Wagstaff & Magnus Lindelow, 2008. "Analyzing Health Equity Using Household Survey Data : A Guide to Techniques and Their Implementation," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6896.
    4. Colin McFarlane & Renu Desai & Steve Graham, 2014. "Informal Urban Sanitation: Everyday Life, Poverty, and Comparison," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 104(5), pages 989-1011, September.
    5. Richard A Bryant & Alison Schafer & Katie S Dawson & Dorothy Anjuri & Caroline Mulili & Lincoln Ndogoni & Phiona Koyiet & Marit Sijbrandij & Jeannette Ulate & Melissa Harper Shehadeh & Dusan Hadzi-Pav, 2017. "Effectiveness of a brief behavioural intervention on psychological distress among women with a history of gender-based violence in urban Kenya: A randomised clinical trial," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(8), pages 1-20, August.
    6. Antony Young, 2014. "1 + 1 = 3," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Brand Media Strategy, edition 0, chapter 0, pages 81-99, Palgrave Macmillan.
    7. Fox, Sean, 2014. "The Political Economy of Slums: Theory and Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 191-203.
    8. Wolf, Achim & Gray, Ron & Fazel, Seena, 2014. "Violence as a public health problem: An ecological study of 169 countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 220-227.
    9. Hampshire, Kate & Porter, Gina & Owusu, Samuel Asiedu & Mariwah, Simon & Abane, Albert & Robson, Elsbeth & Munthali, Alister & DeLannoy, Ariane & Bango, Andisiwe & Gunguluza, Nwabisa & Milner, James, 2015. "Informal m-health: How are young people using mobile phones to bridge healthcare gaps in Sub-Saharan Africa?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 90-99.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rahma Hassan & Teela Sanders & Susan Gichuna & Rosie Campbell & Mercy Mutonyi & Peninah Mwangi, 2023. "Informal settlements, Covid-19 and sex workers in Kenya," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(8), pages 1483-1496, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Winter, Samantha & Obara, Lena Moraa & McMahon, Sarah, 2020. "Intimate partner violence: A key correlate of women’s physical and mental health in informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya," OSF Preprints hs2dv, Center for Open Science.
    2. Robson, Matthew & O’Donnell, Owen & Van Ourti, Tom, 2024. "Aversion to health inequality — Pure, income-related and income-caused," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    3. Chandan Deuskar, 2020. "Informal urbanisation and clientelism: Measuring the global relationship," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(12), pages 2473-2490, September.
    4. Nora Lustig & Florencia Amábile & Marisa Bucheli & George Gray Molina & Sean Higgins & Miguel Jaramillo & Wilson Jiménez Pozo & Veronica Paz Arauco & Claudiney Pereira & Carola Pessino & Máximo Rossi , 2014. "El impacto del sistema tributario y del gasto social sobre la desigualdad y la pobreza en Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, México, Perú y Uruguay: Un panorama general," Commitment to Equity (CEQ) Working Paper Series 1313S, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    5. Andrew J. Mirelman & Miqdad Asaria & Bryony Dawkins & Susan Griffin & Richard Cookson & Peter Berman, 2020. "Fairer Decisions, Better Health for All: Health Equity and Cost-Effectiveness Analysis," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Paul Revill & Marc Suhrcke & Rodrigo Moreno-Serra & Mark Sculpher (ed.), Global Health Economics Shaping Health Policy in Low- and Middle-Income Countries, chapter 4, pages 99-132, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Mohammad Abu-Zaineh & Habiba Romdhane & Bruno Ventelou & Jean-Paul Moatti & Arfa Chokri, 2013. "Appraising financial protection in health: the case of Tunisia," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 73-93, March.
    7. Jenny Saxton & Simone N Rodda & Natalia Booth & Stephanie S Merkouris & Nicki A Dowling, 2021. "The efficacy of Personalized Normative Feedback interventions across addictions: A systematic review and meta-analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(4), pages 1-31, April.
    8. Ahmed Shoukry Rashad, 2014. "The Catastrophic Economic Consequences of Illness and their Effect on Poverty Estimates in Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine," Working Papers 842, Economic Research Forum, revised Oct 2014.
    9. World Bank, 2012. "Health Equity and Financial Protection in Ghana," World Bank Publications - Reports 27067, The World Bank Group.
    10. Shikuo Chen & Chenhui Wei & Tianhong Yang & Wancheng Zhu & Honglei Liu & Pathegama Gamage Ranjith, 2018. "Three-Dimensional Numerical Investigation of Coupled Flow-Stress-Damage Failure Process in Heterogeneous Poroelastic Rocks," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(8), pages 1-16, July.
    11. Kinyondo, Abel Alfred & Ntegwa, Magashi Joseph & Masawe, Cresencia Apolinary, 2022. "Socioeconomic Inequality in Maternal Healthcare Services: The Case of Tanzania," African Journal of Economic Review, African Journal of Economic Review, vol. 10(1), January.
    12. Rahman, Md Mizanur & Jung, Jenny & Islam, Md Rashedul & Rahman, Md Mahfuzur & Nakamura, Ryota & Akter, Shamima & Sato, Motohiro, 2022. "Global, regional, and national progress in financial risk protection towards universal health coverage, 2000–2030," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 312(C).
    13. Tavares, Lara Patrício & Zantomio, Francesca, 2017. "Inequity in healthcare use among older people after 2008: The case of southern European countries," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 121(10), pages 1063-1071.
    14. Ben Jann, 2008. "A Stata implementation of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition," ETH Zurich Sociology Working Papers 5, ETH Zurich, Chair of Sociology, revised 14 May 2008.
    15. Sowmya Dhanaraj, 2014. "Health Shocks and Coping Strategies: State Health Insurance Scheme of Andhra Pradesh, India," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2014-003, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    16. Chen, Yiu Por (Vincent) & Zhang, Yuan, 2018. "A decomposition method on employment and wage discrimination and its application in urban China (2002–2013)," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 1-12.
    17. Hai Zhong, 2010. "The impact of missing data in the estimation of concentration index: a potential source of bias," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 11(3), pages 255-266, June.
    18. Francis Onditi & Moses Obimbo & Samson Kinyanjui Muchina & Israel Nyadera, 2020. "Modeling a Pandemic (COVID-19) Management Strategy for Urban Slums Using Social Geometry Framework," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 32(5), pages 1450-1475, December.
    19. Tomson Ogwang & Germano Mwabu, 2024. "Adaptation of the Foster‐Greer‐Thorbecke poverty measures for the measurement of catastrophic health expenditures," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(10), pages 2419-2436, October.
    20. Hirvonen, Kalle & Bossuyt, Anne & Pigois, Remy, 2017. "Complementarities between social protection and health sector policies: Evidence from the Productive Safety Net Program in Ethiopia," ESSP working papers 112, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0230894. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.