Mary O'Brien doesn't want to open a shelter for battered women. She doesn't want to staff a hotline or offer counseling. She doesn't want to help newly-independent women find jobs or daycare or a lawyer. It's not that she doesn't care about domestic violence or its victims. She simply wants to go deeper — beyond domestic violence itself to the cultures that perpetuate and condone violence against women, and the uncoordinated systems that address it.

"Of course direct services are important, but improving the system that victims have to deal with — the hospitals, the police, the courts — that's important too," she says. "Current systems are primarily designed to respond to assault and abuse after they have occurred — they're not designed to prevent it or eradicate it."

In Philadelphia's domestic violence community, where internecine conflict between rival agencies is the norm, O'Brien's stance is not popular, but one that seems inevitable in a career rooted in her desire for promoting honest communications and respect for human dignity.

After graduating from George Washington University with a B.S. in zoology, O'Brien worked as a research associate for one of the many "beltway bandit" consulting companies that support the federal government. In this role, she developed, implemented and evaluated public education campaigns designed to increase awareness of depression and breast cancer. Her supervisor encouraged her to take the next step, to earn her Ph.D., so that she would have more powerful intellectual "tools" to do the work. At the same time, O'Brien started dating a New Zealander who was working in the U.S. for his "overseas experience." After a short courtship (she knows something good when she sees it!), they got married and traveled to New Zealand. During her seven years there, O'Brien earned her M.Sc. in psychology and Ph.D. in behavioral science from the University of Auckland.

O'Brien returned to the U.S. in 1994, settled in Philadelphia, and started teaching medical students at the former MCP Hahnemann School of Medicine, now Drexel University's College of Medicine. As Assistant Director of Clinical Skills, she taught medical students, residents, and attending physicians how to interview their patients and screen for domestic violence (DV). At the same time, she chaired the subcommittee for Research and Evaluation of the MCP Hospital Domestic Violence Task Force and volunteered at Women in Transition, a local DV agency, as a counselor on the hotline. This stint as a hotline counselor made it clear to O'Brien that domestic violence affects huge numbers of people. She wrestled with the question of how to keep the violence from happening in the first place, so that women don't have to call a hotline or find a shelter. O'Brien was also troubled with what women face after they make that first call to the hotline and the many different people they have to tell their stories to — doctors, nurses, police officers, lawyers, and judges. She had serious questions about what these people know or think they know about domestic violence.

Then in 1996, O'Brien joined the faculty of Drexel's School of Public Health. She focused her research on program planning, implementation, and evaluation, specifically on domestic violence prevention programs in schools and health care settings. Since then, she has remained active in the DV community as a member of the Board of Directors at Women Against Abuse and the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women.

In her early years at the School of Public Health, O'Brien worked with David Ruth, Dean of Students at MCP Hahnemann University, to develop the "VIP Team," or "Violence Intervention and Prevention Team" in the University's Office of Student Life. O'Brien and Ruth worked together to provide 40 hours of training to department staff to increase their awareness of domestic violence and improve their ability to respond to students, faculty or staff who may exhibit signs of abuse. Dean Ruth was extremely supportive, O'Brien recalls. "David Ruth stepped right up to the plate. He participated in the training, and put the money, time and effort into this program."

The work with Dean Ruth and with Philadelphia area hospitals has been so successful that O'Brien has presented her work in Amsterdam and is exploring violence against women prevention programs in China and the Dominican Republic. Programs like these are significant, according to O'Brien, because DV is a threat not only in Philadelphia but all over the world. In fact, the report "Ending Violence Against Women," issued by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in 2000, found that around the world at least one woman in every three has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. That same report called on the world's health care community to respond to physical and sexual abuse as "a major public health concern and a violation of human rights."

O'Brien's efforts to answer that call eventually led her to a program designed to increase the conviction rates of perpetrators of domestic violence. In Wilmington (DE), San Diego, and Miami, police officers and healthcare workers were given some training in domestic violence and its effects, and were trained to use specially equipped Polaroid cameras to document injuries sustained by victims and survivors of domestic violence. O'Brien wanted to study the results of these programs, but learned that no one had tracked them.

"How can we integrate the system that handles domestic violence? And how will we know what works best if we don't track results?" she wondered. To get the answers, O'Brien decided to bring the program to Philadelphia and, through the School of Public Health, revise, implement and evaluate it in detail. Throughout 2001 and 2002, she built relationships with Philadelphia's Police Headquarters as well as detectives in the police department's Domestic Assault Response Team, the District Attorney's Office, the Philadelphia Hospitals Domestic Violence Task Force (which she now chairs), the Sexual Assault Advisory Committee, and community organizations like Lutheran Settlement House, Women Organized Against Rape, and the Women Against Abuse Legal Center. During that time, she worked to raise money for the project, called "Picture This," receiving grants totaling more than $25,000 to get the project started. Finally, in the spring of 2003, the first 20-hour training program was held for police officers and healthcare workers. "We may not see significant systems changes right away," she says, "but it's great to finally get the process started."

O'Brien isn't taking it easy, though, now that "Picture This" has begun. During the development phase for "Picture This," she has taught in Drexel's Master's of Public Health program. She teaches in and serves as coordinator for the Program Planning and Evaluation curricular block, and also teaches courses in Behavioral Assessment and Community Assessment.

In addition to her teaching responsibilities, O'Brien has many other projects in the works — a program to train Philadelphia judges on domestic violence, a partnership with the Bucks County Domestic Violence Task Force, a project using writing to help DV victims heal from their trauma, an evaluation of the "Stop It Now" program that appeals to adults to hold other adults responsible for child sexual abuse, and a program to train clergy members to respond effectively to women experiencing domestic violence.

And as if all that wasn't enough, O'Brien is also a mother to daughter Katie, a lively almost two-year-old girl whom O'Brien and her Kiwi husband of nearly 18 years adopted from China last year. In O'Brien's sunny 11th floor office at 15th and Race Streets, Katie's presence is unmistakable, from the plastic gates ready to snap into place in the office door, to the toys on the floor and the pictures plastered on the walls.

With her characteristic smile, O'Brien says, "That's what this is all about. Working to make a world free of violence, for my child and everyone's children."

That's a tall order, but if there's anyone who can help make it happen, it's Mary O'Brien.