JoNell Efantis Potter, Ph.D. | 2021 National Crime Victims' Service Awards Tribute Video

JONELL EFANTIS POTTER: Internationally and in the United States, human trafficking is a huge problem. Victims have some very significant healthcare issues. Years and years of not receiving primary healthcare, and then all of the trauma and brutality that comes with being trafficked. 

You need to have identification, you need to have insurance to just make an outpatient appointment. So it was a fatal fail. 

I am a nurse. My career started when the HIV epidemic hit Miami in the early 1980s, and it was from that experience that we built a lot of multidisciplinary models of care. 

And so we said, "Okay, we have to figure this out." THRIVE is a comprehensive medical and mental health model that provides healthcare services for survivors of human trafficking. 

But it's really the team, it's like a family. It's like the patient's family. 

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to design this model at the tertiary care center because of all the multidisciplinary teams and the trauma teams that are here. And we needed support staff, people that understood trauma and could basically be available for the patients 24 hours a day. I think it's going to be smoother. We're going to try it. 

We really wanted an outpatient clinic. The hospital system gave us one room where you could walk down an exterior private hallway, skip the waiting room, enter from the back. And the provider, they're going to come to that same room. It just really worked. It was, like, magical. 

STATE ATTORNEY: I don't know where our victims would be had it not been for the safety net of services that you all have built ... 

JONELL EFANTIS POTTER: Trauma is not easily undone, but the majority of patients are getting better. Our model has already been replicated in Houston and they are trying to establish a THRIVE model in the Atlanta area. 

As a Nation, we have to establish sustainable evidence-based models of care for this vulnerable and very unique population.