The Team Impact Award recognizes the critical contributions made by crosscutting teams in addressing today’s complex challenges. Specifically, the award recognizes a team for excellence in innovative and impactful scholarship that either has or soon promises to fundamentally advance knowledge, understanding and/or applications in ways not achievable by individual investigators or single disciplinary approaches alone.
2024 Recipient
The Center on Human Trafficking, Research & Outreach (CenHTRO) is an interdisciplinary effort based at the UGA School of Social Work and comprising faculty, staff, and students on three continents and operating in 10 countries. The center, formally established in 2021, has built a global community of human-trafficking scholars, an unprecedented achievement in this field. Garnering $30 million in funding, CenHTRO supports rigorous and innovative trafficking studies incorporating the expertise of faculty in economics, international affairs, law, political science, public health, social work, sociology, and statistics. Center researchers collaborate with multiple arms of the United Nations to encourage evidence-based interventions to prevent trafficking, support survivors, and strengthen prosecution of traffickers. With the center’s guidance, governments have passed and enforced anti-trafficking laws and helped NGOs and nonprofits remove victims from slavery-like conditions. CenHTRO has trained almost 4,000 individuals—including judiciary members, law enforcement, social workers, educators, students, and community groups—to improve local action against human trafficking.