Scoping review of public health interventions to prevent modern slavery among children and adults

Background: Modern slavery is an umbrella term that encompasses the offences of human trafficking and slavery. It involves exploitation of a person or persons by others for personal or financial gain. There are many types of exploitation that people might experience, including labour exploitation, forced servitude, criminal exploitation and sexual exploitation. Trafficking, entailing the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons for the purpose of exploitation. While incidence and prevalence rates are difficult to ascertain, it is estimated that almost 50 million people globally live in modern slavery, which is nearly one in every 150 people. In the UK, approximately 1.8 per 1,000 people in the UK experience exploitation annually. In recent years, a public health approach to modern slavery has emphasised the need to focus on prevention. Experts in the UK have co-produced a model theorising this approach, recommending interventions operating at the policy, regional and local, and service level. However, the landscape of interventions that have been delivered and evaluated across these three domains is not clear. We will conduct a scoping review to systematically map public health interventions targeting modern slavery to address the following questions: 1) What types of interventions target modern slavery? 2) What are the underpinning causal mechanisms of these interventions? 3) Who are the targeted populations of these interventions? 4) What are the targeted outcomes of these interventions? 5) What types of evidence has been generated to evaluate these interventions? Methods: We will undertake a scoping review in accordance with methodological best practice. We will conduct searches in nine bibliographic databases, and a range of government, research centre and charity organisation repositories. We will undertake supplementary literature searching as required. Eligible studies must report an intervention that aims to prevent exploitation or trafficking, prevent further harm, or target re-exploitation or re-trafficking. Interventions are required to have linked evaluation research, which can extend from developmental research to outcome evaluation and implementation evaluation. Data will be extracted and mapped according to the three types of public health interventions (policy, regional and local, service), underpinning mechanisms, target population, targeted outcomes (prevention and re-exploitation or re-trafficking) and type of evidence generated. The review output will include a narrative summary and descriptive tables, in addition to an evidence and gap map generated through EPPI-Mapper. We will undertake two phases of engagement with experts in modern slavery to refine the review scope and develop funder recommendations. Dissemination: The review is an output from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Public Health Review Team. It will support the funder in setting research and funding priorities.