Human Trafficking: It’s Not Just a Crime

Human trafficking, although commonly conceived of as a crime, is also a matter for the fields of health and public health. Trafficked individuals suffering physical, sexual, and/or psychological abuse can experience acute and chronic health sequelae, bringing them to the attention of health and/or mental health professionals. Communicable infections affect many trafficked individuals and can be transmitted to those not trafficked. The factors that contribute to people being trafficked, like poverty, educational disparities, and systematic oppression based upon identities, are multifaceted and interlinked with other trauma experiences. Incorporation of public health principles into anti-trafficking efforts facilitates a comprehensive and holistic prevention/intervention anti-trafficking strategy. This commentary illustrates how both the health care and public health sectors can contribute to improving the health and well-being of trafficked people, the general public, and to anti-trafficking efforts

A Theoryâ based Didactic Offering Physicians a Method for Learning and Teaching Others About Human Trafficking

Emergency clinicians are on the frontlines of identifying and caring for trafficked persons. However, most emergency providers have never received training on trafficking, and studies report a significant knowledge gap involving this important topic. Workshops often employ a â trainâ theâ trainerâ model to address cliniciansâ knowledge gaps involving various topics (including trafficking). By offering participants knowledge and skills needed to both understand relevant content and teach this content to future learners, this model aims at promoting widespread dissemination of essential information. However, current trainâ theâ trainer workshops typically involve full or multiday sessions and employ multimodal instructional techniques, making them time and resource intensive for both participants and facilitators.To address these challenges, we created a 50â minute trainâ theâ trainer workshop to teach emergency clinicians the knowledge and skills needed to recognize and care for trafficked patients while providing instructional techniques to teach learners this content in the clinical environment. Learning theory and principles informed the choice of instructional methods and were employed when designing the paperâ based learning guides that functioned as this intervention’s primary instructional resource. Guides contained detailed scripts used to perform roleâ playing exercises. These â scripted guidesâ were designed for participants to learn important content while simultaneously practicing techniques to teach this content to one another. They provided the scaffolding necessary to independently direct learning during the workshop (with minimal facilitator intervention), while also being carefully formatted and organized to create an accessible tool for future use during clinical teaching.The session was implemented at the 2018 Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana. Based on participantsâ selfâ assessment using a retrospective preâ post test, the workshop was successful in creating a trainâ theâ trainer model that is brief, requiring minimal facilitator resources and offers instruction on both content knowledge and instructional methods to disseminate this knowledge to future learners.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147170/1/aet210206_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147170/2/aet210206.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147170/3/aet210206-sup-0001-DataS1.pd

Public Health Research Priorities to Address US Human Trafficking

In this Perspective, HEAL Trafficking, the nation\u27s leading public health anti-trafficking organization maps out a national research agenda to tackle the problem of human trafficking. Given the paucity of research on trafficking, HEAL Trafficking engaged its membership in a consensus development process throughout 2016 to develop its national research agenda. HEAL Trafficking proposes five priorities that public health researchers should focus on in the decade ahead to make meaningful progress on preventing and responding to human trafficking in the Unites States

How many trafficked people are there in Greater New Orleans? lessons in measurement

In an effort to develop a model for estimating prevalence in a city or region of the United States, this study employed Multiple Systems Estimation, a statistical approach that uses data on known cases collected from individual agencies to estimate the number not known, with the ultimate aim of estimating the prevalence of trafficking in a region. Utilizing de-identified data provided by local non-profits and law enforcement agencies, the researchers estimated the prevalence of trafficking in the New Orleans-Metairie metropolitan statistical area. This represents one of the first attempts to use Multiple Systems Estimation to quantify human trafficking in a United States context. The article provides an account of the impediments to and limitations of conducting such an estimate, given the definitional variance and political dynamics that are endemic to anti-trafficking efforts in the United States. The authors provide recommendations for data collection and prevalence analysis that could be applied in other cities or regions of the United States as well as in other similarly-resourced environments

UK medical education on human trafficking: assessing uptake of the opportunity to shape awareness, safeguarding and referral in the curriculum.

BACKGROUND: Human trafficking is a serious violation of human rights, with numerous consequences for health and wellbeing. Recent law and policy reforms mean that clinicians now hold a crucial role in national strategies. 2015 research, however, indicates a serious shortfall in knowledge and confidence among healthcare professionals in the UK, leading potentially to failures in safeguarding and appropriate referral. Medical education is a central point for trafficking training. We ascertain the extent of such training in UK Medical Schools, and current curricular design. METHOD: We sent Freedom of Information requests to the 34 public UK medical schools, which included a preliminary question on education provision, supplemented with follow-up questions exploring the nature, delivery and format of any education, as well as future curriculum development. RESULTS: There was a response rate of 97%. A majority (72%) of the schools did not provide trafficking education. 13% of these did, however, offer opportunities outside the formal curriculum. 70% had no plans to implement any education opportunities. Among the 28% of schools providing teaching, 56% integrated this within the core curriculum. 56% only delivered this within a single year of the degree. 67% provided some form of teaching in-person, while 78% used a combination of methods. CONCLUSION: Medical education on trafficking in the UK is variable and often absent. To produce future clinicians who are competent and capable, there is a need for expanded education on trafficking and research into optimal curriculum design. The UK's new Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner should work with medical schools to develop an educational strategy urgently to fulfil the UK Government's plans and commitments. Both in the UK and around the world, human trafficking education presents a critical opportunity to address human rights and safeguarding to a generation of new doctors

Human Trafficking Is a Public Health Issue: A Paradigm Expansion in the United States

This clear-sighted reference examines the public health dimensions of labor and sex trafficking in the United States, the scope of the crisis, and possibilities for solutions. Its ecological lifespan approach globally traces risk and protective factors associated with this exploitation, laying a roadmap towards its prevention. Diverse experts, including survivors, describe support and care interventions across domains and disciplines, from the law enforcement and judicial sectors to community health systems and NGOs, with a robust model for collaboration. By focusing on the humanity of trafficked persons, a public health paradigm broadens our understanding of and ability to address trafficking while adding critical direction and resources to the criminal justice and human rights structures currently in place. Among the topics covered: Children at Risk: Foster Care and Human Trafficking LGBTQ Youth and Vulnerability to Sex Trafficking Physical Health of Human Trafficking Survivors: Unmet Essentials Research Informing Advocacy: An Anti-Human Trafficking Tool Caring for Survivors Using a Trauma-Informed Care Framewor