Podcasts: Anti-trafficking and the role of the ED (part a)

On this episode, host Jason Woods speaks with Dr. Makini Chisolm-Straker, an ED physician in New York who is also a co-founder of HEAL Trafficking, an organization that works to fight human trafficking in all forms.

Summary:

Definition of trafficking

Numbers and general info

-Overall labor trafficking is most common

-On a 2016 survey of victims of trafficking, 55% had seen an ED/UC while trafficked

There is no comprehensive trafficking screening tool in existence

-The Greenbaum tool is only for use in english speaking patients ages 13-17 and evaluates for risk of sex trafficking

Quotes from Dr. Chisolm-Straker

-It is important NOT to employ the Greenbaum Tool until the clinician has had a frank conversation about mandated reporting with the patient.

-Too often clinicians envision trafficking as a crime from which which victims must be rescued or saved. That is not our job. And it does not work. Victims that are unwillingly rescued often end up back in exploitation circumstances. Many young people in trafficking situations do not identify as victims and some feel a strong sense of agency: others expect to be criminalized by authority figures because that has been their experience.

-We must apply the principles learned from because of IPV work. Survivors know more about their situation and needs than we do. Our rescue actions, intended with love, often have untoward unintended consequences for those we seek to serve.