Assets and Logic: Proposing an Evidenced-based Strategic Partnership Model for Anti-trafficking Response

Author: Preble, Kathleen; Nichols, Andrea & Owens, Megan

Abstract:Since knowledge about human trafficking has increased over the last 20 years, so have our understandings about interventions, survivor empowerment, and attention to intersectional forces that lead to trafficking vulnerability and exiting barriers experienced by survivors. An area lacking in such advancement, however, relates to collaborative community responses (CCRs), which have notably increased evidenced-based, effective responses in other public health and health equity responses. CCRs have been part of US-based antitrafficking efforts since the passage of the U.S. TVPA, but very little research has examined their effectiveness or how to standardize a unified collaborative effort in multidisciplinary antitrafficking teams around common goals. The proposed model utilizes health equity techniques to map existing community resources that could potentially respond to identified needs. Using logic models, the proposed process allows for interdisciplinary teams to systematically plan a response using the identified assets in their community to achieve a common ultimate goal and improve the response to human trafficking. Research, practice and policy implications are discussed.

Keywords: strategic planning, human trafficking, multidisciplinary teams, asset mapping