Sex Trafficking of Serbian Women: Sex Trafficking Project: Where do I start?

Well folks, this is my first blog... so bear with me.

As some of you may know and others are becoming aware, I am in my first year of the Masters in Public Health program at the University of Washington here in Seattle. It is a fantastic program that I hope will enable me to make a positive impact on the world. What does that actually mean, you ask? Let me start here...

Excerpt From My Statement of Purpose

When I was a child, my father asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. He was a conservative man with strong ideas of men and women’s places in society. I was a tomboy with the independence to go to the store on my own and the stomach for stepping on worms. Dad’s gender education was founded on ideas birthed in the 1930’s that had little place in my world as a young rule breaker. I told him I wanted to be an archaeologist and have my husband do the dishes. We disagreed a lot. However conversational and respectful our differences of opinion were, they were frequent and expansive as I became more rigid about the fact that I wanted fluidity in how society had constructed gender. I wanted choices that were not truncated to a list of the 3 out of 5 behaviors I could perform based on gender and/or sex. Conversations about gender construction with my father and thereafter with my friends, and my rebellious fortitude led me to seek out higher education that would give me the foundation to determine if my experience was unique or ordinary. That education gave me the tools to channel general ideas into a concentration, one where I can create an impact. That concentration is a Masters in Public Health in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Program at the University of Washington.

My focus in the MPH in the SBS program stems from a few experiences. During my undergraduate study, I traveled abroad with the Comparative History of Ideas department for one quarter to study in the Czech Republik on a topic close to my heart, gender politics. My instructors spoke of cases where women with education, who had few to no opportunities for employment, were persuaded to become sex-workers. A local Czech feminist who began a free condom and clean-needle program for IV drug addicted prostitutes gave chilling stories of women who were trafficked into sex-work after being promised jobs that paid better than collecting coins at public toilets. After reading and hearing similar stories while living in Prague and traveling around Eastern and Western Europe, I wondered why women were being kidnapped and sold into prostitution in countries that are said to be burgeoning with opportunity due to an American culture acclimation. I discovered that this was the next evolution of my research interests.

Understanding that I had revealed the next progression of the research I wanted to conduct, I looked for professional research experience that would help me hone my concentration. Coordinating Female Sexual Arousal Disorder clinical trials at the Reproductive and Sexual Medicine Clinic gave me a clearer view of the politics of women’s health care when it comes to the topic of sexuality. Clinical trial sponsors were hesitant to give funding for the investigation of women’s sexual dysfunction. Studies investigating sexual arousal and response were limited in scope and number. It seemed that funding was harder to obtain when women’s sexuality was being investigated, which led me to speculate that women who are sexual by vocation severely lacked health care services that could effectually deal with disease, dysfunction, and sexual well-being whether it be mental or physical. I realized that this one experience, while valuable to growth of my career and my research focus, was limited in perspective and would need to be further fleshed out with additional knowledge and skills.

I looked for job experience with a behavioral approach to intervention and research design that would expose me to the next level of the specialized research that I would come to find valuable daily as an investigator. I entered the field of HIV medication compliance research at the University of Connecticut and later at the Madison Clinic at Harborview Medical Center. I interviewed subjects on a daily basis asking questions about their personal health care choices, sexual activity, drug use, interpersonal relationships, etc. I found similarities in subjects’ backgrounds that led me to question why I did not see more social and behavioral interventions being conducted to prevent HIV infection. The interventions and literature focused more on the facility of condom use rather than the social analysis as to why individuals may not even try to prevent HIV infection. I wanted to know if there were ways to encourage subjects to become advocates for their own health with regard to HIV infection.

While assisting the study, I had amazing interactions with the subjects and the HIV positive peers. Many of the subjects were indigent, abusing substances, and fighting depression. On my last day with the project, one of the peers from the clinic reflected that working with me helped him to forget that he was positive. His sentiment helped me realize that not only had the subjects and peers helped me put a face on people living with HIV but that I had made a positive impact on their lives as well. This realization was one of the great moments of my life because it made me understand the power of vulnerability and acceptance.

I continued to pursue a research career in a clinic setting and recently moved into a lead research coordinator position in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) in the Division of Gastroenterology. Working in detail-oriented and exacting fields like HIV and IBD has taught me to cultivate my collaboration skills and achieve my work goals by maneuvering through a bureaucratic system effectively. Although IBD is not the focus of the degree I am pursuing, the appointment affords me the ability to see the process from not only a regulatory/procedural perspective but also from a management and budgetary point of view in multiple ongoing clinical trials. I am acquiring a few of the fundamentals of managing a clinical trial but am still in need of the training that can only be acquired through rigorous study in the SBS program.

The Social and Behavioral Sciences Program curriculum assists me in obtaining the necessary tools to research HIV prevention, gender, and healthcare access for victims of sex trafficking in eastern European countries. The program enables me to relate social influences and interactions of individuals that may consequently lead to healthcare inequalities.

Additionally, I am looking at the prospect of receiving a Doctoral degree in Health Services or a related field. These achievements will be the long-awaited fruit of my original question that I posed to myself, “Do women have to behave the way that society dictates?” Through my pursuit of the answer to this question I gathered a more specified view of the impact of gender on division of labor in Prague; I realized women’s healthcare inequality, particularly in reference to sexuality; I realized I could make a difference in how people view themselves and that there is a lack of social HIV prevention interventions; and I gathered a better understanding of what it takes to manage a research project. Each of these experiences further refined my focus that has created the impetus for my pursuit of the MPH degree.