Anita Ravi, MD, MPH, MSHP is a family physician who has directed her considerable clinical, research, and policy skills toward one goal: transforming health care delivery for women who have experienced sex trafficking and other forms of sexual exploitation. She is the founder and clinical director of the Institute for Family Health’s PurpLE (Purpose: Listen and Engage) Clinic, New York City’s first community health center-based clinic targeted to the needs of survivors of human trafficking and sexual violence. Founded in July 2015, the PurpLE Clinic provides confidential, longitudinal, trauma-informed care.

Dr. Ravi is a former Veterans Affairs/ Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar at Penn, and alum of the MSHP program. During her time here, she received an LDI pilot grant for her project “Domestic Sex Trafficking Survivors in the New York City Corrections System: Identifying Health Care Perceptions and Experiences.” She told us recently, “All of the patient care I provide and the way that I educate other service providers is directly informed by the input and guidance provided by survivors at Rikers through our research project. The ripple effect from this work is ongoing.”

In addition to the PurpLE Clinic, you can find these ripples in peer-reviewed publications in the Journal of Urban Health and Medical Care; in an article in Teen Vogue (yes, that Teen Vogue); in a video in the Annals of Internal Medicine; in blog posts for the Reproductive Health Access Project and in Philly.com (a link to which was shared on Facebook and Twitter by Senator Charles Schumer during the ACA repeal/replace debates); through stick-figure comics (go look) posted by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP); and in a policy resolution passed by the AAFP on improving medical education on trafficking.

And that’s just in the past two years.