Human trafficking: Empowering a comprehensive social work and public health response

Human trafficking is a form of modern slavery involving forced or coerced labor or sex for profit. US-based human trafficking is widespread—with well over 100,000 victims estimated each year—and incurs severe health consequences, including chronic disease, severe injury, psychological trauma, and premature death. Recognizing victim needs, governmental and non-governmental agencies have sought to train health professionals to respond to human trafficking. Trainings focus on legal criteria, signs of trafficking, ideal-type human trafficking cases, and victim needs and legal remedies. Yet, human trafficking often involves fuzzy boundaries between victimization and offending, challenging philosophies and protocols of justice and health professionals. Less clear-cut cases and social-ecological influences are rarely discussed in trainings. Health professionals, however, are uniquely positioned to understand and respond to problems in the social-ecology that increase risk for human trafficking. We explored life histories of 60 incarcerated women to determine how well the human trafficking legal criteria and responses fit women's experiences. We found a high rate of experiences meeting all human trafficking criteria, and many others meeting at least one criterion. Yet, the life experiences of women who suffered poly-victimization blurred the lines of ideal-type human trafficking, and social-ecological issues surrounding women's human trafficking victimizations paralleled conditions surrounding women's victimizations outside of human trafficking. Through the experiences and examples in our study, we illustrate the continuum of human trafficking-related victimizations and their relation to women's social-ecologies. We demonstrate ways to apply these results in trainings and in organizing a broader public health response to human trafficking.