Strategies for the development of a university-community partnership to create human trafficking curriculum

Nationally, human trafficking is now criminalized in 48 states for sex offenses and 50 states for labor offenses. The Department of Justice and Florida Coalition against Human Trafficking identify Florida as a major hub for trafficking, and specifically mention children sexual trafficking. Health care professionals are the front lines in the protection and support of human trafficking victims. Trafficked individuals are susceptible to health risks and health care is sought for them by their perpetrators. The inability of a health care professional to identify trafficked victims during a clinical visit prevents protective services intervention. Health care providers need training and formal education on health care advocacy for this vulnerable group. Health care providers need training and formal education in social justice efforts to reduce human trafficking. Typically, human trafficking training is initiated by community advocacy groups made up of governmental (ICE, FBI, local law enforcement) and non-governmental (Broward County Human Trafficking coalitions, local service providers) organizations. These efforts to provide human trafficking training to current health care providers have not produced an increased number of identified victims via the clinical setting. These community groups are not necessarily familiar with health care but are knowledgeable on human trafficking victims. They are familiar with a trafficked victim's presenting symptoms and perpetrator behavior during a victim's clinical encounter. As part of a funded project, a process was created to produce a university-community collaboration focused on the training of health care educators for the development of human trafficking curriculum for students in the Colleges of Health Care Sciences and Nursing. Unlike community delivered and initiated human trafficking training, this curriculum development included health care educators. The community's input on the real world application was essential as it provided knowledge on the practical use of this new training and curriculum. Central to the success of this funded project was the on-going participation of community organizations. The process to initiate and maintain community-university collaboration required establishing strategies to identify common goals, objectives, and agreed upon assessment tools. The greatest challenge to this process was the ability to maintain balanced decision making such that both groups felt their contribution was equally valued. The development and implementation (including all activities) of this process was documented through the life of the funded project and was determined to be successful. It is presently being modeled for future use in the university's other health care professional colleges.