Preventing Child Trafficking: A Public Health Approach

How can a public health approach advance efforts to prevent, identify, and respond to child trafficking?

Child trafficking is widely recognized as one of the critical issues of our day, prompting calls to action at the global, national, and local levels. Yet it is unclear whether the strategies and tools used to counter this exploitation―most of which involve law enforcement and social services―have actually reduced the prevalence of trafficking.

In Preventing Child Trafficking, Jonathan Todres and Angela Diaz explore how the public health field can play a comprehensive, integrated role in preventing, identifying, and responding to child trafficking. Describing the depth and breadth of trafficking's impact on children while exploring the limitations in current responses, Todres and Diaz argue that public health frameworks offer important insights into the problem, with detailed chapters on how professionals and organizations can identify and respond effectively to at-risk and trafficked children.

Drawing on the authors' years of experience working on this issue―Diaz is a doctor at a frontline medical center serving at-risk youth, victims, and survivors; Todres is a legal expert on legislative and policy initiatives to address child trafficking―the book maps out a public health approach to child trafficking, the role of the health care sector, and the prospects for building a comprehensive response. Providing readers with advice geared toward better understanding trafficking's root causes, this revelatory book concludes by mapping out a "public health toolkit" that can be used by anyone who is interested in preventing child trafficking, from policymakers to professionals who work with children.

Jonathan Todres, JD, is a professor of law at Georgia State University. He has authored numerous publications on child trafficking and related forms of child exploitation.

Angela Diaz, MD, is the Jean C. and James W. Crystal Professor in Adolescent Health within the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She is also the director of the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center.