A Human Trafficking Work Group at a Children’s Hospital S3 E2

This special edition of the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioner’s TeamPeds Talks podcast, FocusED sponsored by the Pediatric Emergency Care Special Interest Group.   FocusED is a podcast program that offers listeners unique insight into the broad scope of pediatric emergency care by exploring a variety of emergency care topics through different lenses across the care continuum.
Cassandra Newell is a pediatric nurse practitioner. She received her master’s degree in nursing from Yale University School of Nursing in 2005. After graduation she worked in general pediatrics at the University of Kansas before moving to the Emergency Department (ED) at Children’s Mercy Kansas City (CM-KC) Adele Hall Campus, where she has worked for the last 12 years. Cassandra currently serves as Secretary for the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioner’s (NAPNAP) Pediatric Emergency Care Special Interest Group. Since 2019, she has volunteered as an Advocate for the Alliance for Children in Trafficking giving peer-peer education presentations to health care providers. Cassandra serves as Secretary for the Greater Kansas City Local Chapter of NAPNAP.
In this episode, Heidi and Rachel share how they developed a human trafficking work group at children’s hospital in the Midwest from the ground up. They describe their future goals for this work group and provide advice for nurse practitioners who may want to start a human trafficking work group where they practice.
Heidi Olson is a Certified Pediatric Nurse, Certified Pediatric Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) and the SANE Program Manager at Children’s Mercy Kansas City. Since 2019, Heidi’s team has identified numerous trafficking victims through the use of an evidence-based screening tool in the Emergency Department. Additionally, Heidi started and co-leads the human trafficking work group at Children’s Mercy which aims to increase recognition of victims and provide support for vulnerable kids.
Rachel Whitfield is a Family Nurse Practitioner working in Adolescent Medicine at Children’s Mercy Kansas City. Rachel works in both the primary care and residential mental health settings and often encounters vulnerable youth in her practice. Rachel has a particular interest in the recognition and intervention of vulnerable youth in the clinical setting which is how she got involved in human trafficking work. She is the co-founder/co-leader of the human trafficking work group at Children’s Mercy which aims to increase recognition of victims in the health care setting and provide support for vulnerable youth in our area.