Health care workers should look for signs of human trafficking, Michigan doctor says

Health care workers should look for signs of human trafficking, Michigan doctor says

By Justin P. Hicks | jhicks3@mlive.com

Nearly 88% of human trafficking survivors report accessing health care services during their trafficking situation, according to a nonprofit advocacy group known as the Polaris Project.

That statistic could be surprising. However, it’s appropriate – if not a slight underestimate – once people start to understand what trafficking looks like, explained Dr. Jamie Hope, an emergency medicine physician for Corewell Health, formerly known as Beaumont Health in southeast Michigan.

“The numbers are starting to increase in terms of how many we recognize, but we don’t know how many are out there,” she said. “On a given day, if we see 100 patients, how many of those were trafficking victims? We don’t know until we get better as a society and as a profession at recognizing it.”