Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement,

and a former health commissioner here in Baltimore.

Our goal is to bring evidence and experience

to illuminate critical public health issues.

If you have questions or ideas for us,

please send an email to public health question

at jhhu.edu.

That's public health question at jhu.edu

for future podcast episodes.

Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of Public Health On Call.

Today, I speak with Savannah Powell, a sexual assault nurse examiner and researcher in Portland,

Oregon.

We talk about the role of sexual assault nurses in medical settings, the importance of trauma-informed care for victims of assault, and the current

staffing crisis exacerbated by a national nursing crisis and trickled down effects from the

Supreme Court's ruling on Roe v. Wade. A note that this episode was co-produced by one of our

interns, Hannah Bennett. Let's listen. Savannah Powell, thank you so much for joining us on public health on

call. Tell us what is a sexual assault nurse? Yeah, thank you so much for having me. So a sexual

assault nurse is actually a specially trained nurse who cares for victims of sexual violence. And so when someone presents to, say, an

emergency room after in a sexual assault, we are able to get a history of the assault in order to

guide our care. We assess and document injuries. We collect forensic evidence if that is needed.

And then we provide the patient with medications to prevent pregnancy. We collect forensic evidence if that is needed.

...