What We Do | Make Sense Foundation

Domestic Violence

1 in 3 women has experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner.
Nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States.
U.S. Department of Justice estimates that 95% of assaults on partners or spouses are committed by men against women.
Roughly 50% of domestic violence incidents go unreported each year.
Studies now indicate that roughly 1/3 of abused people will become abusers as adults.

The United States is ranked as one of the worst countries in the world for human trafficking, with an estimated 199K incidents occurring annually.
The U.S. Department of State estimates that nearly 18,000 people are trafficked into the United States each year.
3 most common forms of human trafficking are sex trafficking, forced labor, and debt bondage.
Human trafficking is the fastest-growing and second-largest criminal industry in the world.
It was estimated that in 2021, 27.6 million people were living in modern slavery across the globe.

The United States has the largest number of women and children experiencing homelessness – 85% of those homeless families are headed by single women.
Nearly three-quarters of people experiencing homelessness were adults aged 25 or older and 18% were children under the age of 18.
2.5 million children are now homeless each year in America (1 in 30)
90% of youth accessing youth shelters state that they experience difficulties at home that include fighting, abuse, or worse.
The average age of a homeless person in America is 11 years old.
Almost 60,000 families with children are homeless on any given night in the United States.

Over 35 million people live in poverty in the United States.
As of February 2022, poverty among children increased by 3.4 million.
In 2021, the poverty rate in the United States was highest among those under the age of 18.
Nealy 5% of U.S. deaths are found to be attributed to poverty each year.
Child poverty rate is just over 15% which means 1 in 6 children live in poverty.

7% of young women from low-income families have a child by the age of 18
Only 1 in 10 youth from low-income families go on to graduate from a four-year college.
Over a 24-hour period in 2020:
- Nearly 1,500 teens will attempt suicide.
- Over 2,700 teenage girls will become pregnant.
- Over 3, 500 teens will run away from home.
- 15,000 teens will use drugs for the first time.
- 2 teenagers will be murdered.
- 12 young people between the ages of 15 and 24 will die by suicide.
CDC reports that 2.5 million U.S. middle and high school students reported using e-cigarettes in 2022.
CDC also confirmed that almost 3,000 cases of e-cigarette or vaping use-associated lung injury and an average of 68 deaths in 2020.
There were almost 5,000 children less than 5 years of age that went to a hospital emergency room after being in contact with nicotine from an e-cigarette or vaping in 2020.

In 2023, it is estimated that nearly 10,000 children (0-15) and almost 5,000 (15-19) will be diagnosed with cancer.
In children under 15, leukemia makes up 28% of all childhood cancers with brain cancer (26%) coming in second followed by lymphoma at 12%.
Cancer is still the number one cause of death by disease among children in the United States.
Every day, 47 children are diagnosed with cancer in the United States.
The most common type of cancer in women is breast cancer, with over 300 thousand cases each year.
It is estimated that nearly 50 thousand deaths from breast cancer will occur in the United States in 2023. In 2020, almost 685 thousand women across the world died from breast cancer.
Heart Disease is still the number one cause of death in women in the U.S. – killing over 300 thousand in 2020 (about 1 in every 5 female deaths)