Training US health care professionals on human trafficking: where do we go from here?

Figures & data

Figure 1. NHTRC calls- general vs. health care provider (HCP).

Figure 2. Total health care provider (HCP) calls vs. mental health (MH) provider calls to NHTRC.

Figure 3. Reasons for health care provider (HCP) calls to NHTRC.

The NHTRC utilizes seven distinct categories to describe a caller’s reason for contacting the NHTRC and track substantive calls received through the hotline. Substantive calls exclude hang ups, wrong numbers, missed calls, and calls where the caller hangs up or is disconnected before the purpose of the call can be determined.

General Information Requests: This category includes calls requesting general information on the issue of human trafficking, such as legal definitions, scope, statistics, trends, and prevalence.

Direct Services Referral Requests: This call category includes requests for direct service referrals for survivors of human trafficking. Referrals may include contact information for service providers, law enforcement, coalitions and other collaborative efforts, and other relevant agencies or field practitioners. The most commonly requested referrals are for case management services, shelter services, legal services, mental health or medical services.

Tips: This category includes calls received from individuals who wish to report tips related to human trafficking victims, suspicious behaviors, and/or locations where human trafficking is suspected to occur. Potential human trafficking tips received by the NHTRC are reviewed by hotline supervisors and regional specialists before being passed on to the appropriate local, state, or federal investigative and/or social service agency equipped to investigate and/or respond to the needs of victims. Not all tips are reported to law enforcement, and any reports made respect callers’ preferences regarding confideniality. Reporting decisions are based on a variety of factors, including the callers’ needs and wishes, and the needs and wishes of victims.

Training & Technical Assistance (T&TA): T&TA requests include but are not limited to: specialized information; programmatic and project support; phone consultations; materials reviews; and trainings and presentations.

At-Risk: This category refers to calls referencing related forms of abuse and exploitation that may put individuals or specific populations at risk for human trafficking, such as labor exploitation, domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, and runaway/homeless youth.

Crisis Calls: This category includes calls received from victims of human trafficking in need of immediate assistance or from an individual calling on behalf of a victim in need of immediate assistance or emergency services. The NHTRC has developed extensive crisis protocols and local emergency referral and reporting networks to ensure that NHTRC staff are able to provide an immediate and tailored response to crisis calls.

Unrelated: This call category refers to calls that are outside the scope of NHTRC services. NHTRC Call Specialists refer callers to other national hotlines, service providers, or coalitions that are best equipped to fulfill their request.

Figure 4. Types of calls by health care provider (HCP) to NHTRC over time.

Table 1. NHTRC number of HCP calls by state, 2008–2015.

State	Number of Calls, 2008–2015
California	279
Texas	173
Florida	99
Ohio	98
Illinois	71
New York	67
Washington (state)	61
North Carolina	58
Pennsylvania	57
Massachusetts	56
Michigan	55
Maryland	54
Georgia	53
Missouri	43
Virginia	42

Figure 5. Assessing impact of human trafficking medical education, a hierarchical, patient-centered model.

HT = human trafficking; HCP = Health care providers.

Table

Interview Questions
Respondent Information
Location of Organization
Date of Interview
Training Logistics and Format
Where have you conducted training?
Do you offer more than one level or kind of training? If so, what kind?
In what year was the first training session you conducted?
What type of recruitment/advertisement of training was used?
How many training sessions have you conducted or offered?
Who were the populations in attendance at your training sessions?
Roughly how many people attend or participate (if online) at an average training?
Did you develop your own training materials, or did you use a training that was already developed?
If you used other off-the-shelf materials, whose did you use?
What was the format for training?
How long were the training sessions?
Which of the following components are covered in your training?
Evaluation
Was there formal post-training evaluation?
How did you conduct the feedback evaluation?
If there was formal post-training evaluation, how soon after the training session was this done?
If an evaluation was conducted, what was the general feedback received? *
Feedback in mind, if you were to administer the training again what would you do the same?*
What would you do differently? *
What has been the impact of the training? What examples of behavior change, practice changes, etc., are you aware of? *
Next Steps
What are the biggest barriers in training healthcare providers on human trafficking?
What do you perceive to be your next steps with regard to training HCP on HT?

All questions multiple choice, except those marked as otherwise

* Open-Ended