Safe haven clinics

“I think many people don’t understand or realize that these kinds of trafficking experiences are happening not very far away,” she says.

Safe spaces for care

Jennifer Cox is system director in charge of the medical safe haven program, an offshoot of Dignity Health’s Human Trafficking Response Program. Dignity Health launched the latter program systemwide in 2014 to better identify trafficking victims in health care settings and to provide these patients with traumainformed care. Studies have shown that many victims of sex and labor trafficking have contact with health care providers.

A study done by the nonprofit antitrafficking organization Polaris found that survivors consistently reported disheartening interactions with medical care providers “ranging from a dismissal of their pain or symptoms, snide or insensitive comments or questions, to more overt harassing behavior such as victim blaming, or even abuse by emergency health professionals.”

When the Human Trafficking Response Program began, Cox was working in community health and outreach for Dignity Health. She built relationships with community-based groups offering safe harbor and services to trafficking survivors. Cox worked with the groups to figure out how health care providers and social service providers could improve access to care and services. Among the things she learned in the process was that most trafficking victims got only episodic care, such as in emer-