Brooke de Heer and her community partner, Kate Wyatt received $5,000 from the SHERC Community-Campus Partnership Support (CCPS) for their work with Flagstaff Initiative Against Trafficking (FIAT).
De Heer is an NAU assistant professor in criminology and criminal justice, and Wyatt, who founded FIAT three years ago, has worked with the Northland Family Help Center in Flagstaff for seven years.
By collaborating with local agencies, de Heer and Wyatt will use the funding to begin design and development on a shared human trafficking database. The 29 member FIAT coalition, identified 48 adults and 28 youth who were trafficked locally one year, from 2017 to 2018.
“Human trafficking is a public health crisis that garners little attention and resource, particularly in rural areas,” said Nicolette, Teufel-Shone, associate director of CHER and a professor in the Department of Health Sciences. “The intention of the SHERC CCPS award is to support the development of strong community-academic partnerships that can make a difference.”
CCPS, through the Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative’s (SHERC) Community Engagement Core, is a program dedicated to developing community-university relationships. Since July 2018, CCPS has funded 12 partnerships through bi-annual competitive application rounds totaling more than $50,000.
CCPS receives funding from the Southwest Health Equity Research Collaborative at Northern Arizona University (U54MD012388), which is sponsored by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD).