Texas ranks second only to California in the nation in the number of reported human trafficking cases per state. Within Texas, Houston had the highest reported number of trafficking cases for cities (National Human Trafficking Hotline, 2020). In 2019, Texas implemented House Bill 2059, which mandates that all health care providers complete a state-approved training course on human trafficking as a condition for state license renewal. The PATH Collaborative, a growing partnership among San Jose Clinic, St. Luke’s, Baylor College of Medicine’s anti-human trafficking program, and Doctors for Change, designed a state-approved “Human Trafficking 101” training program for health care providers. To date, we have trained over 2,000 health care providers across the state in the screening/identification, intervention, and advocacy of human trafficking victims and survivors. Before and after each training seminar, we administered a pre- and post-survey to participants in order to assess knowledge and attitudes of human trafficking in the health care setting. Between November 2020 and October 2021, we collected pre- and post-survey responses from 853 individuals. Based on our survey results, we plan to improve our existing Human Trafficking 101 training, and to add on a Human Trafficking 102 training program which focuses on individuals from marginalized subpopulations who are at higher risk for human trafficking. In our presentation, we will (1) discuss the scope of human trafficking in Texas, (2) describe HB 2059 and the importance of training health care providers on identifying and assisting victims of human trafficking, (3) describe the results of our survey data, and (4) outline our next steps to improve our human trafficking education program.
References:
Texas. National Human Trafficking Hotline. Published 2020. Accessed January 8, 2022. https://humantraffickinghotline.org/state/texas
