It Takes A Village: The Lower East Side Girls Club
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At a time when the Lower East
Human trafficking and the health care provider: Safety first, rescue second
In recent months, I have attended some very good presentations on human trafficking awareness. About a week ago I heard a presentation at the International Association of Forensic Nurses Scientific Assembly in Puerto Rico about trafficking and the role of the health care provider. I enthusiastically registered for this session because I thought it might shed some light on what health care providers– specifically nurses are supposed to do when they discover that their patient is a survivor of human trafficking.
What I did hear was what human trafficking is, the laws against trafficking in persons, how a survivors of trafficking might present or how they might behave in a clinical setting, and the many health risks imposed by this horrible crime. The presentation was informative and at the same time, a little disappointing. This presentation, like many others I have heard, fell short of telling the health care providers about the next steps–what to actually do when a trafficking survivor is sitting in front of you and seeking help.
In some presentations it is recommended to call the National Human Trafficking Hotline operated by the Polaris Project and based in Washington, DC. I am a subscriber to the Polaris Project’s e-newsletter and read in the September 28, 2012 issue that the Hotline has fielded 60,000 calls since 2007. Astonishing! I wondered, though, how can the Hotline help me as nurse in Florida when the person on the other end of the line is several states away? To answer my own question, I called 888-373-7888 to find out.
Sandy was worse than expected
By Ann Campbell “You hoped it wasn’t going
Childhood obesity declines in several states,cities
Written by Charmaine Ruddock ‘Childhood obesity declines in
Reflective Writing with Parents and Siblings of Cancer Survivors
Jim Stubenrauch is a CHMP senior fellow. Follow him on Twitter: @jimstuben.
It was nine o’clock on Sunday morning, October 14, and an audience of young cancer survivors, their parents and siblings, and physicians, social workers, and other clinicians were gathered in the spacious third-floor library of the New York Academy of Medicine, listening to a keynote address by reality television star Kathy Wakile.
CHMP senior fellow Joy Jacobson and I were there, too—and no, we hadn’t accidentally wandered into an episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey.
The occasion was the first-ever “Campference”—part camp, part conference—of the Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation (CBTF), an organization dedicated to improving “the treatment, quality of life, and the long-term outlook for children with brain and spinal cord tumors.” The CBTF, which marks its 25th anniversary this year, supports research, education, and advocacy to help both survivors and their families.
And all this while giving medications too?
Ann Campbell, RN-BC, MPH is a hospice
Nursing, Mindfulness and the Dalai Lama
[caption id="attachment_5164" align="alignleft" width="112"] Dean Dorrie Fontaine,
Debating Freedom of Choice
The vice-presidential debate shed some interesting light
Poetry, Politics, & American Rage
About a hundred billion tweets ago, in
Poetry, Politics, & American Rage
About a hundred billion tweets ago, in
Healthcare as a Message Strategy
The New England Journal of Medicine is among the most widely read health professional publications in the U.S.
President Obama and Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney know how important the support of this core constituency is to their respective campaigns. NEJM invited the candidates to appeal directly to readers through personal essays, which appear in the September 26 online edition. You can read the President’s complete essay here, and Governor Romney’s here.
How the media reports on human trafficking is critical
Nancy Cabelus, DNP, MSN, RN, is an international forensic nurse consultant currently working with Physicians for Human Rights on a program addressing sexual violence in conflict zones in central and east Africa. She is a CHMP Senior Fellow.
Yesterday, I attended a human trafficking conference in Pinellas County, Florida sponsored by the United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, and St. Petersburg College. As a retired police officer and a proactive, forensic nurse with expertise in human trafficking and sexual violence, I recognize the importance of community involvement in the detection and prevention of human trafficking. Coincidentally, an objective of the conference was to discuss the need for community involvement in the face of human trafficking. One limitation that was pointed out by conference presenters is the lack of media presence on the county’s human trafficking task force. The media has a key role in reporting stories on human trafficking incidents and creating public awareness—giant steps in the primary prevention of human trafficking. During the presentation, a news media clip was viewed of a local reporter covering a story of human trafficking in Florida. In reality, the reported incident was not human trafficking at all. Rather, it was a case of smuggling.
State Health Insurance Exchanges: Say What???
"State health insurance exchanges" sounds bizarre, but
Calling All Nurse Writers
Theresa Brown, RN, is an oncology nurse and one of the very few nationally prominent nurse-writers in the areas of nursing and health care. She on the Center’s Advisory Council and this is her first post as a HealthCetera guest blogger.
Being the “nurse who writes” means I work under a misconception. Although a number of physicians regularly opine on the work they do in books, articles in The New Yorker, and my own home base The New York Times, I’ve never heard the MD-writer combination described as odd or bewildering. However, being an RN-writer is seen as unusual, and my admittedly unusual academic background—I have a PhD in English from the University of Chicago —- contributes to the view that I’m an intellectual oddity among my nursing peers.
But I am not alone in combining nursing and writing. Many nurses will be familiar with Echo Heron’s nursing memoirs and Carol Gino’s The Nurse’s Story. Tilda Shalof, a Canadian ICU nurse, and Patsy Harman, a certified nurse midwife, are both nursing and writing right now, and Harmon’s new novel, The Midwife of Hope River was just released. Saving Lives: Why the Media’s Portrayal of Nursing Puts Us All at Risk, a polemic by Sandy Sommers, RN, MSN, MPH powerfully argues that media stereotypes of nurses dangerously undermine nursing’s professional legitimacy.
These nurses, and I, all write for the same reasons that physicians do: educating the public about how health care works, outlining ways to make health care better, exploring how hard it is to work in a job that often deals with death, or showing what nurses’ clinical work actually involves.
By writing about nursing (or medicine) we learn about the nature of our roles as caregivers and we communicate the importance of that role to readers. In a recent column entitled “Money or Your Life” I wrote for The New York Times, I argued in favor of the Affordable Care Act by telling the story of a patient who wished for a death panel because he had no health insurance and worried that the care he needed to save his life would bankrupt his family. His choice would have been for the government to kill him rather than for his family to become destitute financing his care.
It Takes a Village: Preventing Diabetes
The prevalence of diabetes is at epidemic
Investigating a third component to what’s impacting childhood obesity – environmental factors
[caption id="attachment_5004" align="alignleft" width="150"] photo credit: earthtimes.org[/caption] Although