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Research Roundup: August 2024

It was a busy month for the School of Social Work team. The August roundup includes nine publications.

Joy Noel Baumgartner
Associate Professor Joy Noel Baumgartner is the principal investigator for a newly awarded NIMH R01 grant

Publications

Assistant Professor Rebecca Rebbe, Margaret Lloyd Sieger (University of Kansas), Julia Reddy (UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health) and John Prindle (University of Southern California) co-authored “U.S. State rates of newborns reported to child protection at birth for prenatal substance exposure” for International Journal of Drug Policy. The authors examined the rates of newborns less than 15 days old with prenatal substance exposure (PSE) as reported to Child Protective Services by state and year, with the assistance of data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System. The authors calculated rates using three different definitions, and used a panel data analysis due to the variance between states in reporting PSE. Between 2011 and 2019, the authors found the amount of reports doubled, although there was variability between states. The authors concluded that “State-level inconsistencies in identification, reporting, and CPS responses prevent a clear understanding of the scope of the affected population and service needs.”

Research Assistant Professor Brianna Lombardi, Associate Professor Lisa de Saxe Zerden, Ph.D. Student Danya Krueger, Sundania J W Wonnum (National Institutes of Health) and Erica Richman (UNC Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research) co-authored “When Interruption Becomes Innovation: How Integrated Behavioral Health in Primary Care Adapted During COVID-19” for Family Medicine. Although integrated behavioral health distributed in primary care is crucial to address the increasing behavioral health crisis in the United States, the model shifted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors sought out to examine how IBH themes changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic by interviewing IBH team members. The four themes that emerged were “(a) permanent changes to the physical structure of the team; (b) increased reliance on technology for team communication; (c) shift in team collaboration, often occurring asynchronously; and (d) telehealth embraced for IBH.” The authors concluded “COVID-19 interrupted the originally designed IBH model of team-based care. Changes to the physical proximity of team members disrupted all other components of IBH, requiring adapted workflows, communication via digital channels, virtual team building, asynchronous care coordination, and remote service delivery. Long-term evaluation of these innovations is needed to examine whether shifts in core components impact model efficacy. Training family medicine, primary care, and behavioral health clinicians for these adapted models of IBH will be needed.”

Associate Professor Lisa de Saxe Zerden authored “Voting: The New Social Determinant of Health and a Long-Standing Concept for Social Work” for Social Work.

Assistant Professor Bridgette Thom, Sarah Marion (University of Virginia), Shraddha M. Dalwadi (University of Texas San Antonio), Aleksandra Kuczmarska-Haas (Hartford HealthCare Cancer Institute), Erin F. Gillespie (University of Washington), Michelle S. Ludwig (Baylor College of Medicine), Emma B. Holliday (The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center), Fumiko Chino (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) and Anna Lee (The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center) co-authored “Isolation, discrimination, and feeling “constant guilt”: A mixed-methods analysis of female physicians’ experience with fertility, family planning, and oncology careers” for Cancer. The authors noted that family planning is challenging for female physicians due to “high risks of infertility, workload burden, poor family leave policies, and gender discrimination. Many women report feeling unsupported in the workplace, despite national policies to protect against unfair treatment.” The authors collected responses from 162 physicians to an open-ended prompt for their analysis. The themes they found were “Institutional barriers were highlighted with comments discussing the increased need for parental leave, part-time options and the concern for academic or professional punishment for being pregnant and/or having children. Departmental barriers were explored with comments grouped around codes of discrimination/negative culture and challenges with breastfeeding/pumping and childcare. Personal barriers were discussed in themes highlighting the difficulties that female physicians faced around the timing of family planning, challenges with reproductive health and assistance, and alternative circumstances and/or decisions against family planning.” The authors suggested solutions including “improving institutional support, expanding parental leave, and general cultural change to improve awareness and promotion of family and career balance.”

Assistant Professor Orrin Ware, Jodi J. Frey (University of Maryland, Baltimore), Michael Chidera Ofonedu (George Washington University), Kathleen Hoke (University of Maryland, Baltimore), Clifford Mitchell (Maryland Department of Health) and Marianne Cloeren (University of Maryland, Baltimore) co-authored “Improving Identification of Gig Workers in National Health and Behavior Surveys” for New Solutions: a journal of environmental and occupational health policy. The authors noted the data gaps that are found in U.S. national health and behavior surveys, especially in regard to the growing digital platform section of the work force. They posit that the systems used to recognize health behaviors and status, including substance use, are leaning on dated census categories for workers who are self-employed. The authors note the importance of understanding this sector of the work force, and address the ways that some national surveys have not met that need. The authors proposed “revisions to the categories used to classify type of worker and recommend adoption of a new Worker-Employer Relationship Classification model.”

Assistant Professor Bridgette Thom, Assistant Professor Tess Thompson, Emeline Aviki (New York University Grossman Long Island School of Medicine), Kaitlyn Lapen (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) and Fumiko Chino (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) co-authored “Screening for Health-Related Social Needs and Financial Toxicity Among Patients With Cancer Treated With Radiation Therapy: Findings From a Quality Improvement Project” for the Journal of the American College of Radiology. The authors, while noting the prevalence of both financial toxicity and co-occurring health-related social risks among cancer patients, also pointed out the lack of evidence to support best practices to screen for those risks. The authors “sought to understand variations of identified needs based on treatment course using data from a large screening program.” They concluded that “Screening for financial toxicity and HRSR is possible at a large cancer center. Patients receiving RT have higher transportation insecurity and worse financial toxicity compared with those receiving other treatments. Tailored intervention throughout the treatment trajectory is essential.”

Professor of the Practice Allison Metz, Todd Jensen (UNC School of Education) and Bianca Albers (University of Zurich) co-authored “Development and psychometric evaluation of the Implementation Support Competencies Assessment” for Implementation Science. The authors used their study to examine and describe the development of the Implementation Support Competencies Assessment, which is used to examine implementation support competencies. They concluded “The findings suggest that one’s possession of high levels of competence across each of the three competency domains is strongly associated with theorized outcomes that can promote successful and sustainable implementation efforts among those who receive implementation support from an ISP. The ISCA serves as a foundational tool for workforce development to formally measure and assess improvement in the skills that are required to tailor a package of implementation strategies situated in context.”

Associate Professor Lisa de Saxe Zerden, Julie Cederbaum (University of Southern California), Jose Reyes (California State University), Jennifer Zelnick (Touro University) and Abigail Ross (University of Pennsylvania) co-authored “Understanding the Social Worker Experience with Organizational Changes in HSOs During the COVID-19 Pandemic” for Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance. The authors analyzed the experience of social workers while dealing with organizational changes in human services organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic. They found four themes: “(1) changes to organization capacity; (2) technology/infrastructure and workers arrangements; (3) workplace safety; and (4) impact on clients and workers.”

Associate Professor Lisa de Saxe Zerden, Meg Zomorodi (UNC School of Nursing), Katharine Ciarrocca (Duke University), Madeline Neal (UNC Office of Interprofessional Education and Practice) and Philip Rodgers (UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy) co-authored “Step by Step: Utilizing Kotter’s Model to Design and Implement a Strategic Plan for Institutionalizing Interprofessional Education and Practice” for Journal of Interprofessional Education & Practice. The authors described the steps taken as part of a strategic planning process to make and support a pan-university interprofessional education and practice to bolster interprofessional education among “emerging health professionals/schools-departments at a public flagship university in the southeastern U.S. Additionally, Kotter’s model for institutional change highlights strategies to gain buy-in, and lessons learned. This paper provides a guide to help grow, sustain, and invest in formal IPEP programs for other academic institutions.”

Presentations & Trainings

Associate Professor Lisa de Saxe Zerden, Program Coordinator, UNC-PrimeCare Meryl Kanfer and UNC-PrimeCare’s community partner, Beth Childs with Piedmont Health Services, a FQHC (federally qualified health center), were invited to present to the BHW National Behavioral Health Workforce Collaborative Sponsored by HRSA Bureau of Health Workforce for a workshop titled “Growing and Supporting the Behavioral Health Workforce.”

The Behavioral Health Springboard is offering three free online asynchronous courses that are relevant to anyone working in schools, especially teachers, and each course takes roughly three hours to complete. The courses include:

On July 12, John A. Tate Distinguished Professor for Children in Need Emily Putnam-Hornstein provided invited child welfare testimony to the North Carolina Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

On July 16, John A. Tate Distinguished Professor for Children in Need Emily Putnam-Hornstein delivered a keynote address at the Violence Prevention Research Conference in Portsmouth, N.H. Her talk was titled: “The Critical Role of the Child Protection System…Let’s Not forget about Secondary and Tertiary Prevention.”

John A. Tate Distinguished Professor for Children in Need Emily Putnam-Hornstein was invited to join a poverty and neglect workgroup as part of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Child Welfare Initiative. The initiative was established to “identify and elevate bipartisan approaches to improving outcomes for children and families who are involved with child welfare system.” Over the next year, the workgroup will meet monthly both virtually and in Washington, D.C.

Smith P. Theimann Jr. Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Professional Practice Kimberly Strom presented “Ethical Action in Challenging Times” at the University of Sussex.

Smith P. Theimann Jr. Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Professional Practice Kimberly Strom conducted a workshop on “moral courage in childcare social work: The experiences of Black women leaders” with Gillian Ruch (University of Sussex), Nana Bonsu (London Borough of Camden), Naomi MacMeekin (Swindon Borough Council), and Beverley Hendricks (London Borough of Haringe) at the Joint Universities Social Work Education Conference in Kingston, England. 

Assistant Professor Sonyia Richardson presented “Black youth suicide by the numbers” at the UNC Suicide Prevention Institute Annual Forum in August.

The fall 2024 Mental Health First Aid training schedule is now available for faculty, staff and students. The 8-hour training will give participants the skills to help someone who is developing a mental health problem or experiencing a mental health crisis. You can register here. Requests for group trainings can be found here.

Associate Professor Will Hall, Assistant Professor Ankur Srivastava, Ph.D Student Dicky Baruah, Ph.D. Student Pin-Chen Chiang and Ph.D. Student Jake Leite attended the Emory University-hosted 2024 National LGBTQ Health Conference from Aug. 15-17 in Atlanta.

Eleven faculty from schools of social work around the country attended an orientation on Aug. 14, 2024, sponsored by The National Initiative for Trauma Education and Workforce Development (NITEWD) to introduce them to a newly developed case designed as part of the trauma intervention course, the Core Components and Skills for Trauma Informed Practice.
The case of Maribel tells the story of a 15-year-old Salvadorean girl who has experienced trauma through the loss of her family due to gang violence, the need to travel, unaccompanied, from El Salvador to the United States, and her time held in a U.S. detention center. The case offers the opportunity to conceptualize avoidant behaviors resulting from trauma and navigate Maribel’s grief while respecting cultural norms. The Maribel case orientation was presented by Yvonne Ruiz, Ph.D., Yeni Silva, and Jason Mallonee, DSW, LCSW-S. Eleven faculty members will now be able to include this case in the Core Components and Skills for Trauma Informed Practice course offered in their individual MSW programs.

Associate Professor Sarah E. “Betsy” Bledsoe presented “August Consultation Call on Non-Verbal Interventions Common Trauma Informed Practice Element” for the National Initiative For Trauma Education and Workforce Development.

Awards, News & Recognition

Assistant Professor Sonyia Richardson (right)

Assistant Professor Sonyia Richardson was selected as a fellow to participate in the Health Disparities Research Institute with the National Institute of Mental Health Disparities from Aug. 5-9.

Assistant Professor Orrin Ware was selected for Stanford’s C-DIAS Fellowship in Addiction Dissemination and Implementation.

KUPAA is an acronym for Kuwezeshana kupata uzima (translated from Swahili it means ‘supporting one another for wholeness’)

Associate Professor Joy Noel Baumgartner is the principal investigator for a newly awarded NIMH R01 grant entitled “Family Psychoeducation for Adults with Psychotic Disorders in Tanzania (KUPAA trial).” It is a $3.7 million grant for five years to conduct a hybrid effectiveness-implementation clinical trial in collaboration with four Tanzanian institutions: Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences in Dar es Salaam, Mbeya Zonal Referral Hospital in Mbeya, Mirembe National Mental Health Hospital in Dodoma, and Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College in Moshi, plus Duke University.

Associate Professor Rainier Masa received an award from the National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center for his R01 project “Kupambana: A Combined Microeconomic and Stigma Reduction Intervention for Young People Living with HIV in Zambia.” Masa is the MPI in collaboration with Joseph Zulu (MPI, University of Zambia), Arnie Aldridge (Co-I, RTI), and Don Operario (Co-I, Emory).