President Barack Obama yesterday announced several new initiatives to combat human trafficking and publically thanked Johns Hopkins University for its work helping victims. The Administration also announced a partnership among the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Goldman Sachs Foundation and the Advisory Council on Child Trafficking.
In his remarks to the Clinton Global Initiative, the President listed a new assessment program, strengthened training for investigators, the development of new online tools, stricter rules for contractors, and increased services for victims among the many additional steps he has directed his Administration to take in the fight against what he called “modern slavery.”
According to a White House fact sheet released yesterday, the Administration’s new initiatives will augment other work being done to stop human trafficking including the Bloomberg School’s partnership with the Goldman Sachs Foundation and the Advisory Council on Child Trafficking.
The new partnership, led by Judith Bass, PhD, MPH, assistant professor in the Department of Mental Health, and Elizabeth Letourneau, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Mental Health, will focus on informing best practices and gaps in evidence for the prevention of child sex trafficking and treatment for survivors in the United States. A two-day symposium about this work is planned for the spring of 2013.
Human trafficking victimizes more than 20 million people around the world, both in the United States and abroad.
Media contact: Tim Parsons, director of Public Affairs, at 410-955-7619 or tmparson@jhsph.edu.
