VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Aug. 28 (UPI) -- Canadian and U.S. researchers say nurses could be a key to helping sexually exploited runaway girls recover.
Elizabeth Saewyc of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and Laurel Edinburgh of the Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota studied the Runaway Intervention Program at Children's Hospital in St. Paul, Minn.
Through the intervention program, nurses worked beyond providing clinical support to providing home and school visits, and often coming up with creative problem-solving strategies to help girls communicate with family members, stay in school and otherwise heal.
The study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, finds both the girls and their families reported significant improvements -- including better relationships and improved grades as well as less stress, suicide attempts and risky sexual behaviors.
"Remarkably, by six and 12 months into the program, the girls had improved so much that in most areas they were indistinguishable from girls in school who had never been abused," Saewyc says in a statement.
