This report presents a systematic review describing the evidence on the health outcomes for women who experience IPV, noting that the causal pathways are complex and subject to a rapidly growing body of knowledge.

This paper also provides a description of data sources that exist on IPV prevalence for Australian women, notably the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Personal Safety Survey (PSS) 2012, and discusses possible ways forward to address the gap in exposure data for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.

A key objective will be to inform the inputs required to produce estimates of disease burden attributable to IPV in Australia. Forty-three studies were found to have a sufficient level of evidence to include as potential inputs for the calculations of disease burden in terms of the health loss from specific diseases and injuries.

Based on these studies, the findings confirmed that there is strong evidence of increased risk due to exposure to IPV for depression, termination of pregnancy and homicide. Evidence was also found for a possible increased risk for anxiety, premature birth and low birth weight, cardiovascular conditions and self-harm. It was found that the impact of IPV exposure on alcohol and drug use disorders is bi-directional and risk should be carefully interpreted. These findings are consistent with those found in previous Australian and international burden of disease studies.

In future, where data are available, there is potential to use direct evidence to derive further Australian-specific measures of association of particular health outcomes, such as nonfatal injuries.

Several research gaps were identified, and could be used to guide future research on IPV. There is a need for further evidence of causality by establishing the temporal relationship between the exposure to IPV and health outcomes in women.