Selena Childs is serving as the Catawba County, N.C. site consultant as part of her work with the National Quality Improvement Center for Adoption and Guardianship Support and Preservation (QIC-AG). She will be working closely with the site for the five years of the Children’s Bureau-supported cooperative agreement to identify and test an evaluable intervention with promise of improving permanency and wellbeing outcomes for children. Other sites participating in the QIC-AG include Illinois, New Jersey, Tennessee, Texas, the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Vermont.
Childs is coordinating the 5th Wicked Problems of Child Welfare Institute, which is a national group of child welfare experts including state affiliates of the Children’s Home Society of America, their university partners, philanthropists, and public child welfare administrators. Through these Institutes, child welfare practice-based research networks are launching in states across the U.S. including North Carolina, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Washington State, and Wisconsin. The 5th WPI is being held Oct. 20-21 in Chicago.
Rebecca Macy was promoted to an associate editor for the journal Psychology of Violence. Published by the American Psychological Association, it is a multidisciplinary research journal devoted to violence and extreme aggression, including identifying the causes of violence from a psychological framework, finding ways to prevent or reduce violence, and developing practical interventions and treatments. The journal’s impact factor score for 2014 was 2.368.
Lisa de Saxe Zerden and Anne Jones spoke about “Integrated Health Care: Preparing Social Work for a New Environment,” at the UNC Program on Health Workforce Research and Policy’s seminar series on Sept. 16. They discussed the development of a scalable model to prepare MSW students for advanced practice as members of interprofessional care teams, providing assessments and brief treatments for behavioral health problems as part of routine primary care appointments. Read more about this initiative.
Bebe Smith is interviewed in the first installment of a new podcast series, CTI Spotlights, launched by the Center for the Advancement of Critical Time Intervention, Silberman School of Social Work, at Hunter College CUNY. Smith was the project director for Critical Time Intervention: Local Pilot and Statewide Championing, a project funded by the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, from July 2012 to June 2015. She is currently working with the NC Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services to support the expansion of CTI in North Carolina. Listen to the podcast.
Kim Strom-Gottfried was selected by the National Association of Social Workers’ Office of Ethics and Professional Review as their Guest of Honor at the 55th Anniversary of the NASW Code of Ethics luncheon in conjunction with the NASW 60th Anniversary event. During the event, Strom-Gottfried will be presented with the Excellence in Ethics Award. It will take place on Oct. 23 at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
Strom-Gottfried provided a keynote on moral courage to the annual national conference of the American Association of Service Coordinators, in Nashville, on Aug. 22.
Marie Weil, Berg-Beach Distinguished Professor, will be teaching a new graduate course in the spring 2016 semester, “Community-Led Sustainable Development” (SoWo 799). This course is also an elective for UNC’s new interdisciplinary Graduate Certificate in Participatory Research. The course will be co-sponsored by the Resourceful Communities Program (RCP) of the Conservation Fund. RCP works with over 200 grassroots organizations in North Carolina focused on sustainable development. Community-Led Sustainable Development is one of the inaugural graduate level service learning courses supported by the Carolina Center for Public Service, and will involve students in developing needed products or participatory research as requested by community partners of RCP.
One of Sheryl Zimmerman‘s papers in The Gerontologist, published by Oxford Journals, was their most widely cited paper in 2014. In fact, Zimmerman was a co-author on three of the five most widely cited papers published that year. The Gerontologist rates 4 out of 32 journals in gerontology. The top paper is “What Does the Evidence Really Say About Culture Change in Nursing Homes?” (by Victoria Shier, Dmitry Khodyakov, Lauren W. Cohen, Sheryl Zimmerman, and Debra Saliba; Volume 54, Supplement 1, 2014). The next two are “Who Are the Innovators? Nursing Homes Implementing Culture Change” (by David C. Grabowski, Amy Elliot, Brigitt Leitzell, Lauren W. Cohen, and Sheryl Zimmerman; Volume 54, Supplement 1, 2014); and “Culture Change and Nursing Home Quality of Care” (by David C. Grabowski, A. James O’Malley, Christopher C. Afendulis, Daryl J. Caudry, Amy Elliot, and Sheryl Zimmerman; Volume 54, Supplement 1, 2014).
Upcoming AHEC presentations by faculty
Oct. 2, Southeast AHEC – The Human Rights and Ethical Issues of Involuntary Commitment – Tara Bohley
Oct. 29, Greensboro AHEC – DBT and Chronic Suffering Related to Emotional and Physical Pain – Deborah Barrett
