1. Baptist Health, South Miami Hospital, FL
2. Advocate Aurora Health, Chicago, IL
3. Hackensack Meridian Health, NJ
4. Harris Health, Houston, TX
5. RWJ Barnabas Health, NJ
6. Northwell Health, PA
Here is a look at some photos of our recent training at Baptist Health South Miami Hospital:
Dignity Health / Common Spirit Health is at the forefront of developing and delivering human trafficking training for healthcare professionals, thus we asked them to lead this initiative. They, together with Selah Freedom, provided educational teams for all sites. These training teams were selected, coordinated and managed by Petra Linden, the System Director for Dignity Health, now Common Spirit Health, and our GSO Director of Education.
- All healthcare sites received three days of training from a team of 3-4 people including content experts, a clinical lead, and survivor speakers.
- Paula Besler, a legal expert from Selah Freedom, joined the training teams to offer her expertise.
- During those three days, a ‘Level 1’ basic human trafficking program was taught for the first 2 days at hours around the clock to reach all shifts for personnel from the ED including doctors, nurses, social workers, security, registration staff, chaplains, etc.
- The third day was dedicated to ‘Level 2’ HT Training to those who will be more directly involved with the victims, i.e. nursing managers, supervisors, and social workers and train the trainers. Note: an online training module was available for anyone who missed the live training, as well as all future new hires.
In addition, on Day 1 of the training, a Strategic Leadership and Community Meeting took place to bring together several external local partners from their community programs/NGOs, law enforcement, community agencies, district attorney’s office; local Homeland Security Investigations agents, etc. to meet with hospital leadership to ensure access to services for patient identified as having indicators of trafficking. Homeland Security worked with leadership to return at a mutually convenient time to provide their new training for the healthcare industry to complement what GSO will begin.
What Came Next?
Once training was completed in January 2020, the research component began. Dr. Cathy Miller, our GSO Director for Research, assisted all sites on pre- & post-training data collection. Fortunately, Cathy was successful in obtaining an IRB approval from UT Tyler, and all sites agreed to reciprocity. Cathy also offered her assistance to all sites for the opportunity to write their own case study as it relates to developing their policy & protocol development should they so choose.
A Press Conference was scheduled for Thursday, January 30th, 2020 in Washington, DC during Human Trafficking Awareness Month. The purpose was to give recognition to the six CEOs, their leadership teams and their healthcare systems who are pioneers in leading this important initiative. This was also an opportunity to highlight the importance of training healthcare professionals throughout the industry — realizing that without such training it would be impossible to reach the SDG goal of eradication of human trafficking by 2030.
Things to Look Forward to…
We will continue to keep you updated as this program develops. In the meantime, here are some things to look forward to in the future:
- Final Research results and findings will be delivered at the United Nations venue, date and time to be determined
- Second ‘wave’ of GSO initiative both domestically and internationally to be launched