I 
117TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 5762 
To establish a National Domestic Violence Prevention Action Plan to expand, 
intensify, and coordinate domestic violence prevention efforts among Fed-
eral, State, local, and Tribal government agencies and with other relevant 
stakeholders, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
OCTOBER 27, 2021 
Ms. WEXTON (for herself, Mr. JOYCE of Ohio, Mr. CLEAVER, Mr. VARGAS, 
Mr. GREEN of Texas, Ms. MANNING, Ms. DEAN, Mrs. HAYES, Ms. 
CLARKE of New York, Ms. ADAMS, and Mr. MFUME) introduced the fol-
lowing bill; which was referred to the Committee on Education and Labor 
A BILL 
To establish a National Domestic Violence Prevention Action 
Plan to expand, intensify, and coordinate domestic vio-
lence prevention efforts among Federal, State, local, and 
Tribal government agencies and with other relevant 
stakeholders, and for other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘National Domestic Vio-
lence Prevention Action Plan Act of 2021’’. 
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SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds the following: 
(1) Domestic violence is a serious public health 
problem and more than 10 million individuals expe-
rience domestic violence in the United States each 
year. 
(2) According to the National Intimate Partner 
and Sexual Violence Survey in the United States— 
(A) more than 1 in 4 women and nearly 1 
in 10 men will experience contact sexual vio-
lence, physical violence, or stalking by an inti-
mate partner and experience an intimate part-
ner violence related impact in their lifetime; and 
(B) approximately 1 in 4 women and 1 in 
7 men experience severe physical violence by an 
intimate partner in their lifetime. 
(3) More than half of female homicides are con-
nected to intimate partner violence and in a domes-
tic violence situation the presence of a gun increases 
the risk of homicide by 500 percent. 
(4) While domestic violence can affect anyone, 
research indicates that communities of color, individ-
uals with disabilities, LGBTQ+ individuals, and 
other marginalized communities can be dispropor-
tionately impacted. 
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(5) Domestic violence leads to the loss of nearly 
8 million days of work each year the lifetime eco-
nomic burden on victims is $3.6 trillion, in which the 
government pays approximately $1.3 trillion (37 per-
cent) of the burden. 
(6) The United Nations has urged countries to 
adopt national action plans to combat gender-based 
violence and violence against women, including do-
mestic violence, and approximately 50 countries, in-
cluding Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, 
Germany, Spain, and Ireland, have adopted such 
plans. 
(7) The United States does not have a national 
plan of action on domestic violence or gender-based 
violence, making it a global outlier. 
(8) While the Violence Against Women Act 
(VAWA) enacted in 1984 and the Family Violence 
Prevention and Services Act (FVPSA) enacted in 
1995 are the United States landmark pieces of do-
mestic violence legislation and have many of the 
hallmarks of a national action plan on domestic vio-
lence prevention, from the public health and the en-
forcement perspectives, respectively, the United 
States does not have a whole-of-government, goal- 
oriented, community-informed, forward-looking na-
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tional plan of action for domestic violence preven-
tion. 
(9) In 1995, the Office on Violence Against 
Women (OVW) was created within the Department 
of Justice (DOJ) to administer grants authorized 
under VAWA and offer financial and technical as-
sistance to communities across the United States 
that are working to develop and maintain programs, 
policies, and practices geared towards responding to 
domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, 
and stalking. 
(10) In 2002, OVW was codified through Title 
IV of the 21st Century Department of Justice Ap-
propriations Act (Public Law 107–273). 
(11) The FVPSA is the primary Federal re-
source dedicated to the provision of domestic vio-
lence shelters, supportive services, and related pro-
gramming for victims of domestic/dating violence 
and their dependents. 
(12) The FVPSA Program administers State 
and Territorial Formula Grants, Native American 
Tribes Formula Grants, State and Territory Domes-
tic Violence Coalitions Grants, Discretionary Grants, 
Specialized Services to Abused Parents and their 
Children, Training and Technical Assistance Re-
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source Centers Grants, and the National Domestic 
Violence Hotline Grant. The FVPSA authorizes 4 
major activities that: 
(A) Assist States and Tribes in efforts to 
prevent domestic violence and dating violence. 
(B) Provide immediate shelter and sup-
portive services for victims of domestic violence 
and their dependents. 
(C) Provide for a National Domestic Vio-
lence Hotline. 
(D) Provide for technical assistance and 
training relating to domestic violence and do-
mestic violence programs to States, Tribes, pub-
lic agencies, community-based programs and 
the public. 
(13) Since 1996, the Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention (CDC) has awarded DELTA 
funding to State Domestic Violence Coalitions 
(SDVCs) to coordinate specific prevention activities. 
(14) Overall approximately 18 States have re-
ceived DELTA funding at some point since the pro-
grams creation. However, only nine States currently 
benefit from this funding. 
(15) According to the CDC, DELTA focuses on 
implementing three strategies with the goal of ad-
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dressing and decreasing community and societal 
level risk, identifying factors in communities that 
may lead to intimate partner violence and increasing 
protective factors that prevent it by— 
(A) engaging influential adults and peers; 
(B) creating protective environments; and 
(C) strengthening economic supports for 
families. 
(16) In 1993, the FVPSA established 4 na-
tional training and technical assistance resource cen-
ters to support, train, and assist domestic violence 
shelters, community-based organizations, victim ad-
vocates, and other professionals in the provision of 
safe housing and supportive services to domestic vio-
lence survivors and their dependents. These resource 
centers include the National Resource Center on Do-
mestic Violence (NRCDV), the Health Resource 
Center on Domestic Violence, the Resource Center 
on Domestic Violence: Child Protection and Custody, 
and the Battered Women’s Justice Project (BWJP). 
In later years, additional resource centers were es-
tablished to focus on culturally specific populations, 
Tribes and sovereign nations, American Indian/Alas-
ka Natives, children exposed to domestic violence, 
mental and behavioral health services, housing, 
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LGBTQ services, and other critical service intersec-
tions to meet the needs of survivors. With respect to 
these resource centers: 
(A) The purpose of these resource centers, 
known collectively as the Domestic Violence Re-
source Network (DVRN), is to engage in indi-
vidual and collective strategic action to advance 
public policy, institutional change, community 
responses, and prevention initiatives that inte-
grate and respond to the diverse realities and 
needs of survivors, their families, and their 
communities. 
(B) The individual advocacy efforts of 
DVRN members are informed by the wide 
range of expertise within the network and 
strengthened by opportunities for critical think-
ing and robust discussion of cross-cutting policy 
and practice issues. 
(C) In 2021, the FVPSA provides funding 
for two national resource centers, four special 
issue resource centers, three culturally specific 
resource centers, five emerging issue resource 
centers, one statewide Alaska Native resource 
center, and the National Domestic Violence 
Hotline and StrongHearts Native Helpline. 
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