Niyah Payne

Professor Stubee

Solution Essay

What Can Be Done?

Human trafficking is a business of using force, coercion, and fraud upon a person. This

illegal business leaves a numerous amount of males and females emotional, mentally, and

physically abused. There are multiple victims who have tried to get help but when health

professionals and law enforcement does not pay close attention, this is when their suffering can

go unnoticed. There are many ways health professions and law enforcement can improve

identifying a human trafficking victim. The first step would be to have better guidelines and

protocols in identifying human traffickers. By better identifying human traffickers, this can help

lower the statistics that represent the amount of human trafficking victims. Signs of human

trafficking going unnoticed is something that happens often but is not done intentionally. To help

reduce this unfortunate crime, educating health profession workers should be the main priority.

Once they are educated on how to pay special attention to red flags more victims will get help.

Another way to minimize human trafficking is for authoritative figures to be more forthcoming.

For authoritative figures to be more forthcoming, this includes them being non judgemental and

willing to help victim begging to be saved. If these two things are put into perspective there

might be a chance in saving a good amount of victims.

Once the aspects of force, fraud, and coercion is into play, human trafficking is lawfully

present. However, there may be times where it is difficult to identify all three. This is where

human trafficking education would be very useful.This is why it is imperative for health

profession personnels to become educated. The knowledge health profession personnels

have,will help them recognize particular signs of a human trafficker without the victim verbally

saying “I need help”. Studies prove 88% of trafficking survivors reported having been cared for

by a health care professional while being trafficked yet none were assisted in escaping their

captors (Konstantopoulos, 2018).This is the reason why certain training should be implemented.

Going forward, the statistical rate of survivors not getting help should not be this high. These

certified caregivers should start with traffickers medical history if there is any. Studies also state

things that should raise a red flag in a healthcare provider is if a patient is complaining of

trauma/musculoskeletal pain, gynecologic problems, or if they’re malnutrous, sleep deprived

along with many other things (US 2017).

It is often said, “Knowledge Is Power”, but the right knowledge has to be given for one to

have power. This is applicable to health profession workers. A lot of times nurses, doctors, and

nurse practitioners see patients who are victims of human trafficking but if they are not given

knowledge on how to identify red flags than the power they have is not useful. In the article How

Nurses Can Make a Difference, it is suggested that certain courses should be implemented to

healthcare providers on how to care for human trafficking victims and the dialogue that should

occur if human trafficking is suspected. When these courses were implemented they should

consist of teaching healthcare providers warning signs, available resources and how to get a

patient to talk to you privately.This should be strictly reinforced near hospitals or safe homes

near borders since this is where human trafficking usually occurs. In this case, psychologists can

aid this situation as well because they can evaluate the mental state of a victim.

Although all advice suggested solutions have been given to those in the health care

system, there are also improvements within law enforcement. Sometimes police officers are the

first ones victims come in contact with, depending on the situation. However, law enforcement
should make a change just as much as nurses, doctors, psychologists and so forth. A suggested

solution to lowering human trafficking on the law enforcers side is to require officers to go

through training to understand the phenomenon of human trafficking, recognizing how

trafficking affects the community and making human trafficking checks apart of a daily routine

(Farrell,2008). If officers are put through training to understand the phenomenon of human

trafficking they will have to learn about typology and variation, meaning grasping the concept of

the different types of human trafficking and how identifying it may vary. They also need to know

how human trafficking affects the community. For example, how younger kids view the

traffickers or the people being trafficked. The environment in which trafficking is being

committed is possibly aiding this henderous crime. Therefore, the community as a whole has to

be understood. Making human trafficking checks apart of daily routines will lower the amount of

victims. If police officers are properly trained, they will know what to look for with the limited

amount of information. When these daily checks are done cops shouldn’t just be doing their

“job”, they should try to build a relationship and try to get an idea of what the victims are going

through so they can help them in private.

Making an effort to change the lives of those in the community, including victims should

be the government’s priorities. Within the boundaries of human trafficking there are certain

adjustments that should be made to help people stay alive. Two things that should be

implemented on the behalf of health professionals and law enforcement is for them both to have

the proper training in order to decrease the amount of trafficked victims. Health professional

workers should be required to go through a certain training in order to be able to identify a

victim. This training will aid those who may not verbally admit they need help getting out of the

situation they are in. In reference to law enforcement, their changes should be made in their daily
routine. Just how they are taught to look for suspicious activity of robbing, selling drugs or a

murder, they need to do the same thing for human trafficking. When both of these suggestions

are implemented there should be a significant decrease in human trafficking statistics.

References

A. Farrell (2008) Law Enforcement Identification and Response to Human Trafficking,

PhD. School of Criminology and Criminal Justice Northeastern University

Wendy L. M-Konstantopoulos (2018) Diagnosis Codes for Human Trafficking Can Help

Assess Incidence, Risk Factors, and Comorbid Illness and Injury , MD, MPH
 Scannell, M., MacDonald, A. E., Berger, A., & Boyer, N. (2018). Human trafficking:

how nurses can make a difference. Journal of forensic nursing, 14(2), 117-121.

U.S Department of Human Services (2017.). Human Trafficking & Health Professionals:

Questions and Answers.