Faith Leader Training and Communication Campaign: Dual Strategies for Preventing Intimate Partner Violence Among Korean American Immigrants

Background and Purpose: Intimate partner violence (IPV) remains a critical concern in immigrant communities, where cultural stigma, patriarchal norms, and limited access to culturally responsive resources constrain prevention and help-seeking. This study evaluated a two-phase, community-based IPV prevention initiative designed to address cultural stigma, gender norms, and communication barriers shaping IPV prevention within Korean American (KA) immigrant communities in a large Midwestern metropolitan area.

Methods: Guided by an ecological and communication infrastructure perspective, the interventions integrated institutional capacity-building with population-level communication. Researchers co-developed two interventions with a community organization serving Asian American (AA) IPV survivors. Phase I consisted of a virtual case-simulation training for 98 KA faith leaders to strengthen institutional readiness to respond to IPV. The intervention consisted of a tutorial, four interactive modules lasting approximately 20 minutes each, and a 100-page Resource Booklet. Phase 2 consisted of a six-month, multi-platform communication campaign targeting KAs, using ethnic-language media, social media, print (both in Korean and English), radio, and video to influence community narratives and norms. Two waves of community surveys, before and after the two interventions, assessed changes in intervention exposure, IPV-related knowledge, attitudes supporting male dominance, stigma about IPV, interpersonal discussion about IPV, and willingness to help in IPV situations. The first wave included 220 AAs (117 KAs and 103 other AAs). The second wave included 223 AAs (109 KAs and 114 other AAs). The KA group was directly exposed to the two interventions, while the broader AA group served as a comparison group to assess intervention-specific effects.

Results: At both waves, most participants were women, immigrants, and married, with similar educational levels across groups. The most notable difference between KAs and other AAs was church affiliation: about two-thirds of KAs reported attending church compared to only about one-fourth of non-Koreans. Among KAs, exposure to intervention messages increased across nearly all information sources. Statistically significant gains were observed in newspapers (50.5% to 63.9%), posters in community businesses (36.4% to 51.9%), and church-based information dissemination (26.0% to 39.4%). Other AAs also reported higher levels of exposure in Wave 2, particularly through social media, from 54.9% to 71.2%. Moderate but statistically significant increases were noted in newspapers (23.2% to 36.8%) and radio (18.1% to 32.4%). KAs who were directly reached through faith-based and ethnic media interventions demonstrated significant improvements in IPV knowledge and reductions in patriarchal beliefs and victim-blaming stigma, whereas changes among other Asian participants, who served as a comparison group, were smaller or inconsistent.

Conclusions and Implications: The differential outcomes of the two-phase interventions highlight the power of direct, culturally embedded exposure in shaping attitudes and knowledge about IPV. These findings underscore the necessity of culturally specific design in IPV prevention efforts and indicate that spillover exposure, although less impactful, can contribute to broader community dialogue. Moreover, sustained and coordinated efforts that integrate faith-based engagement with multi-media communication and interpersonal dialogue have the potential not only to shift individual attitudes but also to transform the broader normative frameworks that shape the social acceptability of IPV in immigrant communities.