Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to Public Health Question at jh.edu.

That's Public Health Question at jh.edu for future podcast episodes.

This is Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of Public Health on Call.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and this year marks the

30th anniversary of the passage of the Violence Against Women Act in Congress. Today,

Stephanie Desmond talks to Johns Hopkins' gender-based violence experts, Dr. Michelle

Decker and Dr. Tierra Willie, about how far we have come since 1994, and the solutions still

needed three decades later. Let's listen.

Michelle Decker and Tierra Willie, thanks so much for joining me.

Thank you so much for the opportunity. It's great to have a chance to connect.

Yeah, happy to be here. Thanks.

So I wanted to talk today about the Violence

Against Women Act, which is turning 30 this year. And before we sort of talk about where we're going,

I'd really like to know sort of where we came from. What was it like in this space 30 years ago,

Michelle? This is an incredible anniversary that we're celebrating this year with the 30 years of the Violence

Against Women Act.

Bringing us back to 1994, really, when this came into motion and came into being, as a result

of an incredible amount of advocacy, I should mention, We really saw a blanket minimization of violence

against women in its many forms, whether it was sexual violence, intimate partner violence,

which was probably commonly known as domestic violence at that time. These were issues that

...