High-profile violence against women captures our attention. That includes allegations of yet another gang rape at a prominent university; a mass shooting in Erie, Pa. that killed eight people, including a pregnant woman and her mother; and the sentencing of former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein for sexually assaulting a production assistant.

These headline cases have more in common than you think. And every day there are countless other cases that don’t make national news, but they are in my community. And they are in yours, even if you can’t bear to see them.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than one in three women experience violence or stalking from an intimate partner in their lifetime. Nearly half of all women experience sexual violence — whether rape, sexual coercion or unwanted sexual contact.

Even as murder rates hit historic lows in the U.S., domestic violence homicides remain relatively unchanged. New or expecting mothers are more likely to be murdered than to die from obstetric causes. The number of women murdered by intimate partners with guns rose 36 percent from 2014 to 2023, with an average of more than 70 women per month shot and killed by an intimate partner from 2020 to 2023.

These homicides shatter families and communities. And, while the numbers are staggering, they cannot begin to capture what one mother survived earlier this year in Shreveport, La. She was shot by her estranged husband but survived having a bullet lodged in her face. Her children were killed.

Technology offers new means of damage, such as sexually explicit deepfakes and assaults that are recorded and distributed, the scale of which is only beginning to emerge. Risks are higher still for people pushed to the margins by stigma and discrimination.

Too often, we see these incidents as isolated. But in order to solve this social problem, we need to recognize it, recognize our own biases and find a way to move forward.

Violence against women is also among the most underreported crimes. Less than a quarter of all incidents of sexual violence were reported to police in 2024, and roughly half of the violence by intimate partners goes unreported in a typical year. This abuse is hidden and yet often cast as inevitable and unpredictable — a framing that fosters tolerance, alongside the requisite handwringing over severe cases.

Survivors can face public skepticism and harassment in speaking up; oftentimes they are blamed for the violence that harmed them. Society’s cold shoulder both threatens their own safety and discourages others from coming forward: the entrenched, implicit prioritization of protecting perpetrators at the expense of survivors and their truth. All the while, violence statistics quietly tally the cost of our impaired vision.

The Cornell and University of Chicago cases emerged just as colleges released their annual Clery Act security reports at the start of October. The Clery Act of 1990 was groundbreaking in requiring transparency on sexual assault and other crimes, but it counts only incidents reported to campus authorities or police. The result is another gross undercount for a crime so rarely reported.

It’s time to see these horrid crimes as patterned, persistent, predictable and preventable — in a word, solvable. The evidence is clear that many strategies reduce risk. Four stand out The first, providing housing and economic support for survivors, is critical for prevention. Economic dependence and a lack of alternate housing keeps women trapped in unsafe situations, where they face escalating violence with potentially lethal outcomes. Women will return to abusive partners to avoid becoming homeless.

The second is to offer every woman information about safety and support services before she wrestles with whether to disclose abuse. Health clinics offer privacy and allow survivors to receive what they need without having to name what is happening to them.

The third is early education on healthy relationships, especially for young people before the teen and early adult years, when sexual and partner violence most often begin. Left unaddressed, early abuse raises risk for revictimization across a lifetime.

Prevention works best early: recognizing red and green flags, normalizing healthy ongoing consent and speaking out not only against assault, but against the everyday disrespect and culture that normalizes it.

Finally, we need high-quality data and transparency. Today’s generations rightly demand access to the true scope of sexual violence, alongside the political will and resources to prevent and respond.

These four solutions are highlighted in the nation’s first National Plan to End Gender-Based Violence, released in 2023. The plan was shaped by survivors themselves, and voices from women, law enforcement, healthcare providers, practitioners and advocates across the nation. Those same voices are now carrying it forward.

The White House Gender Policy Council, the body that coordinated this plan, was dissolved in January 2025, when the second Trump administration began. But we cannot pause. Local leaders have told us how much the plan matters in raising the profile of this issue and guiding solutions.

Violence against women is solvable. We have the data, the framework and tools. It’s time to keep working towards solutions. Women’s lives are depending on us.

Michele Decker, ScD, MPH, is the founder and director of the Center for Global Women’s Health and Gender Equity at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She chairs the Violence Steering Committee for the Bloomberg American Health Initiative and has led the development of a toolkit to communicate evidence and policy solutions at the state and local levels.