According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics the number of people prosecuted for human trafficking offenses has more than doubled between 2011 and 2021. The National Human Trafficking hotline reports that it has identified more than 82,000 instances of human trafficking involving close to 165,000 victims. Researching human trafficking is the focus of this episode of Stats+Stories with our guests Nancy Hagan and Margaret Henderson.

Nancy Hagan is currently a senior research associate at the University of North Carolina School of Social Work with a long history of engaging in both social science research and community centered programming. She came to UNC having served as a policy analyst on the North Carolina Human Trafficking Commission, and prior to that as a senior research analyst on Project No Rest, a UNC-based, federally funded five year initiative designed to create awareness and response to human trafficking across North Carolina. She has also held faculty positions at North Carolina State University. For almost two decades, Nancy allied with others to design, direct, and deliver programming to underserved rural residents of North Carolina, with a focus on working alongside stakeholders from immigrant and farmworker communities. Through this work, she developed expertise around the issue of human trafficking, both sex and labor. She continues to work alongside vulnerable communities to address exploitation in her current role at the UNC School of Social Work.

Margaret Henderson is an expert on facilitation and human services, specifically in cultivating resources and strategies to reduce rates of elder abuse and human trafficking. As a faculty member, her current work primarily includes facilitating public meetings and assisting local governments to address human trafficking and elder abuse. As a former director of the Public Intersection Project, she worked on research and communication strategies that strengthen cross-sector working relationships for more effective public problem-solving. In facilitation work, she specialized in the practical implications of managing cross-organizational collaborations, community programs, and nonprofit organizations.