UofL student-led teams are endeavoring to help some Louisville neighborhoods access understandable, useful information that might affect their health, specifically as it relates to air quality.

The project is one for the Public Health Literacy Group, a coalition of academic scholars, community leaders and activists focused on making the science of public health more accessible. The work recently got a $250,000 boost from the Humana Foundation as part of its ongoing Community Partners Program.

The team includes three UofL scholars – Megan Poole from English, Shavonnie Carthens from law and Abigail Koenig from business – who, with their students, have banded with District 3 Metro Councilwoman Keisha Dorsey, grassroots organization Rubbertown Emergency Action (REACT) and the nonprofit Kristy Love Foundation.

Dorsey’s western Louisville district includes several neighborhoods involved in environmental justice efforts related to air conditions stemming from large chemical plants and other industries in an area locally referred to as Rubbertown, named after tire and synthetic rubber plants built there during World War II.

The project began when Poole was invited to a western Louisville organization’s board meeting to explain how she has her students work with nonprofits and community groups on their writing projects to gain useful experience.

“I believe you learn best by doing, so I try to give them real-world assignments and real-world prompts,” Poole said. “And that’s also how you kind of learn the messiness of business.”

In the audience was Dorsey, who approached her afterward seeking help to translate information that comes out about air pollution into something that her constituents can potentially care about and understand.

Poole, still in her first year at UofL, turned the issue over to her “Writing for Social Change” class last spring. Her students decided there needed to be a website where this material could be housed, and they created infographics to make information more comprehensible.Ěý

“They discovered there was no central hub to talk about the science of air pollution or file complaints or ask questions,” she said.

So now student workers under the direction of Koenig in the College of Business will be working on a website, testing with the community and handling the data analytics, trying to see how people engage with the material and how to increase their engagement.

Through Carthens, a legal writing intern from the Brandeis School of Law is helping work on the language of announcements and information in hopes of making legal notices more easily comprehendible as public health notices.

The Kristy Love Foundation, a survivor-led organization that helps women suffering from traumas including human trafficking and abuse, will help with community focus groups. Women there will be hired to help the team choose locations for the group meetings and to spread the word through canvassing the affected neighborhoods.

The team will rely on neighborhood involvement and serious listening to direct the way citizens want to receive their information, whether it be digitally, on paper or via other ways.

“It really is a community project. What do you know about air pollution? What do you want to know? How do you currently receive this information, if at all,” Poole said. “We feel like before you create information for a specific audience, you have to find out how they want the information.”

The team also will be relying on the longtime, justice advocacy work and knowledge of the REACT group.

At UofL Poole and the other faculty members involved let the students try new things and see what works best to meet community needs.

“They are using the skills they learn to really make a difference now, as opposed to hypothetically one day,” Poole said. “It helps them grapple with what work looks like in the real world. I’m excited about it.”

Beginning at age 19, Cotie was pimped out or walked the streets, offering sex for money for her next high. She was repeatedly physically and emotionally abused and sexually assaulted.

Cotie didn’t have help to avoid what she and others like her call “the life,” but the University of Louisville is working to give victims like Cotie assistance to leave that life behind or elude it altogether.

Sex and labor trafficking combined are, as defined by the National Human Trafficking Hotline, “a form of modern-day slavery in which traffickers use force, fraud or coercion to control victims for the purpose of engaging in commercial sex acts or labor services against their will.” Nationally, more than 8,500 cases of human trafficking were reported in 2017. Almost 6,100 involved sex trafficking, but researchers warn that as many as two-thirds of cases are never reported.

Several departments on UofL’s Belknap and Health Sciences Center campuses began working a few years ago to address human trafficking through the university’s quadruple enterprises of education, research, clinical care and community engagement. Today, the university is leading the way nationally in educating health care providers to recognize signs of trafficking.

UofL’s approach to studying the problem is truly transdisciplinary. Faculty members in social work, criminal justice, engineering, law and medicine are investigating various aspects, from the mental and physical health of victims to the routes and logistics of the actual trafficking.

Cotie didn’t have access to most of UofL’s services until she was leaving the life. But if she had, it could have made a world of difference.

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“That is alarming. That is something that we have to fix,” said Beshear, who detailed several efforts in motion to combat trafficking, which he called “the world’s fastest growing criminal enterprise.”

“Human trafficking represents the worst form of abuse, often to children, and it is increasing in Kentucky,” the attorney general said. “That’s why my office is partnering with the public and private sectors to enhance and improve policy measures and training opportunities to increase resources and awareness to help end human trafficking. Research such as UofL’s study is important and will help our efforts to combat this form of modern-day slavery.”

The Youth Experiences Survey studied 132 homeless youth aged 12-25 during two weeks in October 2016 to determine the scope of sex trafficking in Kentuckiana. More than three-quarters were from the area. The study showed approximately one of every two females and one of every three males reported being sex-trafficked with the average age of their first such experience at 16.

Youths who reported being sex-trafficked were more likely to be drug-addicted, diagnosed with more than one mental health problem and participate in self-harming, including suicide attempts. They also reported a high level of childhood trauma and abuse.

More than 70 percent of the sex-trafficked youth reported that technology was used as part of their victimization with smartphones being the most common. Social media apps such as Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram also played a role in recruiting and selling.

The team hopes the findings will help communities better serve homeless youth through increased awareness of their specific experiences and needs, said Jennifer Middleton, assistant professor of social work and UofL Human Trafficking Research Initiative co-director.

The findings will be shared this month at the 2017 Central Kentucky Human Trafficking Summit at Georgetown College and next month at the Southern Indiana Human Trafficking Awareness Conference at Indiana University Southeast.

“This study provides us with a snapshot of the complexities homeless youth face, particularly youth who have experienced sex trafficking. The results highlight the need for early identification and screening of sex-trafficked youth as well as enhanced, trauma-informed services to help them,” Middleton said.

Middleton said the team’s goal is to expand the study to the entire states of Kentucky and Indiana. The next wave of data collection is underway with youth involved with the justice system.

“This work by the Kent School and the University of Louisville is going to make a difference, and I know it’s just getting started,” Beshear said.

The UofL Human Trafficking Research Initiative at the Kent School of Social Work conducted the initial survey with the aid of eight agencies that helped collect the information: YMCA Safe Place Services, Transition Age Youth Launching Realized Dreams (TAYLRD), Home of the Innocents, Haven House, Center for Women and Families, Clark County Youth Shelter, Floyd County Youth Services and the Kristy Love Foundation.Ěý

Angela Renfro, a trafficking survivor who is founder and executive director of the Kristy Love Foundation, said the research confirms “what we have known for a very long time.”

“Human trafficking is a crime and its victims are often hidden, which makes awareness important and difficult to achieve,” she said.

“It’s very important and I really thank the University of Louisville for helping us.”