Arizona State University Nursing Professor Advocates for Human Trafficking Education

Samantha Calvin, Arizona State University College of Nursing and Health Innovation Assistant Professor, recently spoke at the 14th Annual Human Trafficking and Social Justice Conference held in Ohio. Calvin also teaches an innovate new course at ASU called “Fundamentals of Human Trafficking” which is one of the only courses on human trafficking available in a nursing school.

The conference is intended to bring together researchers, service providers, politicians, advocates, and students from across the globe to learn from each together and work toward finding real-world solutions to this problem. Calvin’s presentation focused on human trafficking in the clinic setting, red flags to look for, questions to ask, and what to do if someone is identified.

“What we’re finding is that health professionals do not feel comfortable identifying and treating someone who has been human trafficked.”

Calvin tells ASUNow.edu, “What we’re finding is that health professionals do not feel comfortable identifying and treating someone who has been human trafficked.” Her research is focused on female adolescent sex trafficking which she uses as course content for the human trafficking course she teaches in the nursing school.

Many schools of social work offer courses on human trafficking, but Calvin is advocating for the importance of knowing how to identify and treat human trafficking patients in a clinical setting. Calvin tells ASUNow.edu, “Even though a lot of these victims seek medical care they are not being identified and end up remaining in the cycle of human trafficking.”

Calvin hopes that sharing her research with other nursing schools across the country will help show the importance of her course at ASU and encourage other schools to add similar courses to their nursing curriculums.