Miami, FL – The Florida Department of Health in Miami-Dade County will be increasing awareness of the Look Beneath the Surface campaign from the Federal Office on Trafficking in Persons with support from the Department of Health and Human Services. January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking awareness month. This year the Department will host a webinar to increase awareness and educate the community on this important public health concern. During this webinar, you will learn what human trafficking is about, what it may look like, and how you can help report a trafficking situation.

At this event, we will have two expert speakers in the field of human trafficking. The speakers for this event will be Ivon Mesa from Community Action and Human Services Department of Miami-Dade County and Marta Martinez from Kristi House, Project GOLD.

Event:     Look Beneath the Surface: Human Trafficking Awareness Webinar
Location: GoToWebinar Platform
Date:      Wednesday, January 20, 2021
Time:      10:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.

Florida ranks third in the nation for human trafficking. Human trafficking is a major public health concern that impacts individuals, families, and entire communities across generations. It requires training and a response from communities, social service providers, health care providers, and other first responders. Many victims of human trafficking are forced to work in prostitution, domestic servitude, restaurant work, janitorial work, sweatshop factory work, and migrant agricultural work.

Look Beneath the Surface is a public health approach to raising awareness of how to identify a victim of human trafficking campaign. It is built on the success of the Department of Health and Human Services Rescue and Restore victims of Human Trafficking campaign, launched in April 2004 to support the implementation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000.

Public awareness campaigns have been effective at increasing victim identification and more strategic efforts can lead to other effective outcomes.

Since 2007, the National Human Trafficking Hotline has received over 216,082 calls. In 2019, through the national hotline there were 11,500 human trafficking cases reported and 48,326 contacts. The campaign also empowers health care providers, faith-based and community organizations to help identify individuals who may be experiencing trafficking and connect them with services by calling the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888.

For more information about human trafficking visit https://www.acf.hhs.gov/endtrafficking.

The event is open to the community.