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, Allison tells us about the Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force and what the partnership or collaboration should look like between health care providers, hospitals, and those at the state level in the fight against human trafficking. Dan tells us about the law enforcement component of human trafficking, the indicators, how health care providers can report and document human trafficking concerns and then what happens next. Lastly, they provide listeners with advice on how to work with officials at the state and law enforcement level.

Alison Phillips is the Director of the Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force for the Missouri Attorney General’s Office. Her job entails facilitating the work of this multi-disciplinary task force in order to create unified and informed state-wide efforts to combat human trafficking. She has previously worked as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Missouri in Kansas City (UMKC) and Mid-America Nazarene University and teaches a course on human trafficking. She has been active in the anti-trafficking movement since 2012 and has a Master’s degree in Criminal Justice and Criminology.

Dan Nash has been a Missouri State Trooper for 26 years and is currently a Sergeant with the Human Trafficking Unit. Dan is a member of and supervises the enforcement section of the Missouri Attorney General’s Office Anti-Trafficking Task Force. Dan teaches Human Trafficking to law enforcement in multiple states and created the Special Victims Methodology on how to interview trafficking victims.