Mandated Continuing Education Requirements for Health Care Professional State Licensure: The Texas Model

ABSTRACT

It is well acknowledged that persons who have experienced human trafficking and persons at risk for victimization often present for health care services. It is also extensively documented in scientific literature that awareness of trafficking among clinical providers remains relatively low. Well-intentioned but poorly executed trainings spread misinformation, aid propulsion of stigma and bias, and often neglect to provide individualized and practically actionable messages for specific clinical audiences. Widespread adoption of standards to ensure evidence-based, patient-centered, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive care is lacking. The state of Texas recently passed legislation requiring direct health care providers to complete one hour of continuing education on human trafficking to qualify for licensure renewal. Advocates guided the implementation of this law based on lessons of previously enacted legislation in other states. Texas can serve as a regulatory policy model for adhering to evidence-based standards in human trafficking educational state or federal mandates.

KEYWORDS:

• Human trafficking
• continuing education
• health care providers
• regulatory requirements
• legislation

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Brandi Soules, Program Specialist at the Texas Human Trafficking Resource Center; Specialty and Family Services; Health, Developmental & Independence Services at the Texas Department of Health & Human Services. Her efforts in planning and oversight of the administration of HB 2059 were instrumental to its success.

Data Availability Statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author Contributions

The authors confirm contributions to the manuscript including conception, manuscript preparation and editing. All authors reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Ethics Statement

This manuscript has not been submitted to any other journal and has not been previously published. All authors contributed to the design, drafting, revising, and editing of the manuscript and all authors approved the final submission.

Additional information

Funding

[redacted].