Professional education
Talks, workshops, and briefings for police, clinicians, schools, and researchers. Each audience gets a different focus.
Who we educate and why
Police, clinicians, schools, and researchers each need a different mission, because they hold different power and meet people at different points in the cycle.
What we offer today: talks, workshops, and briefings. Certification is on hold until we partner with another organization.
Who oversees what
Federal, state, county, and city roles, why recovery housing is regulated as housing, and resident tenancy in California.
Who oversees whatLevels of care
ASAM 4th edition levels, placement basics, billing and brokering risk points, and how states differ.
Levels of careIs patient brokering human trafficking?
Outside the United States, "body brokering" often means trafficking people for organ removal. That practice is formally recognized as human trafficking under the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons (the Palermo Protocol), which lists "the removal of organs" as a form of exploitation (UNODC, UNTOC and Protocols). WHO guidance on organ and tissue transplantation also treats organ trafficking as a serious crime (WHA63.22).
In the United States, patient brokering is different. It involves living patients and kickbacks paid for referrals to treatment programs, recovery homes, or labs. It is usually charged as healthcare fraud and illegal kickbacks — for example under EKRA (18 U.S.C. § 220), Florida's Patient Brokering Act (§ 817.505), and California Health and Safety Code § 11831.6 — not as trafficking. Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (22 U.S.C. § 7102), trafficking generally requires force, fraud, or coercion used for labor or commercial sex.
A brokering case can also be trafficking when those elements are present. Some federal cases have charged both healthcare fraud and sex trafficking in the same sober-home scheme (U.S. Attorney's Office, S.D. Fla. / Amtrak OIG release, Mar. 15, 2017).
Separately, the term "body broker" is also used for the unrelated U.S. trade in donated cadavers sold for medical training and research (Reuters, The Body Trade).
Why this matters: because brokering usually is not treated as trafficking under the law, trafficking hotlines and services often turn survivors away, in PBPI's experience.
If someone may be trafficked: National Human Trafficking Hotline — call 1-888-373-7888 or text 233733 (24/7). In immediate danger, call 911. Hotline details: humantraffickinghotline.org.
Explaining is not excusing
PBPI does not approve of patients brokering other patients. We do try to explain the social circumstances behind it, without excusing the harm. Some people truly believe they are helping a friend. After witnessing enough brokering, some adopt the mindset: "If I don't get paid off this person, somebody else will." Understanding that mindset is how the cycle gets broken, and that is different from condoning it.
Our framework: understanding power dynamics in treatment
Sometimes victims of body brokering are stuck in the cycle long enough to be recruited into brokering themselves, including working with treatment centers. While PBPI does not approve of this, we strive to work on the conditions that cause patients to feel it is necessary. This is a different situation from cases in which people pursue patient brokering despite not needing to, which we believe is rare.
Brokering is sometimes referred to as "marketing," even when it comes down to paying people.
The greatest accountability belongs to the facility owners and operators who fund, organize, and profit from the scheme.
Opportunities for Students
Students can train with us, then take on research, outreach, and education work. The path goes from training, to Agent, to PBPI Fellow.
Grad students only. You must already be working on patient brokering.