McMaster Chapter Teams Up With Experts to Create Educational Panel

On January 19th, 2021, the McMaster CAMSAHT chapter held their first ever virtual event. The chapter collaborated with three excellent speakers who presented to an audience of McMaster medical students from all 3 years. The presentation included an introduction on what human trafficking is, how to spot it in the healthcare setting, and what medical students and healthcare professionals should know about human trafficking. Krystal Snider is a survivor of sex trafficking and other forms of gender-based violence, and her work has focused on developing community responses to issues of trafficking, training on awareness and addressing root causes in a variety of sectors including Medical, Fire Service and Community Agencies. She spoke with Alex Aliferis, a 3rd year medical student. Carly Kalish also spoke at our event, and she is an advocate, innovator, and go-to thought leader for survivors of trauma. She currently drives Victim Services of Durham Region as their Executive Director.

Overall feedback for the event was extremely positive. The McMaster Chapter hopes to be able to include other schools and healthcare programs in the area in their future events, to further increase awareness and knowledge among healthcare providers. The chapter is also interested in adding a participatory session after future events, to allow students the opportunity to practice what they learned with well trained Standardized Patients.

“We are so grateful to our expert panelists for speaking at our event, as well as our participants who came out to learn about such an important topic.” (Margaret MacDonald, McMaster CAMSAHT Chapter President)