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2025 SSWR Conference Presentation Roundup

by Lydia Rose Rappoport-Hankins, Matthew Smith and Barbara Wiedemann

The following roundup includes coverage from some presentations led by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work faculty, staff and students at the 29th Society for Social Work and Research annual conference.



Thursday, Jan. 16

“Conducting Community Engaged Research to Address Youth Mental Health, Wellbeing, Stigma and HIV Prevention: Evidence from Burundi, Ecuador, and United States”

A trio of UNC School of Social Work researchers stressed the importance of incorporating community engagement strategies and methods during the 29th annual SSWR conference.

Moderated by Assistant Professor Ankur Srivastava, panelists Johnson-Howard-Adair Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean for Global Engagement Gina Chowa, Associate Professor Rainier Masa, and doctoral student Joan Wanyama shared their community-engaged research projects in the Galápagos Islands, the state of North Carolina, and the African Republic of Burundi, respectively.

Although the three projects had different focuses and aims — Chowa’s sought to develop a culturally appropriate mental health youth curriculum; Masa’s aimed to reduce stigma and increase HIV prevention services for young Latino sexual minority men; and Wanyama’s hoped to produce interventions that support the mental health needs for adolescent girls and young women — they highlighted the importance of working with communities to develop strategies that incorporated cultural support in their work.

“(Our team) believed that any type of intervention, particularly stigma reduction intervention to encourage this group of Latino sexual minority men to use HIV preventive services, needed to use culturally responsive and participatory approaches,” Masa said. “We wanted to make sure that in addition to their voices, their lived experiences were central to what we were doing and that the interventions we developed were driven by their lived experiences and implemented by the realities and constraints that this group is experiencing.”

Chowa, Masa and Wanyama shared common community-engaged strategies that they used, including partnering with community advisory boards and community-based organizations; collecting insights on lived experiences and identifying successful behaviors and strategies that already exist within their communities; organizing peer-led trainings; and working with local government and community leaders to implement interventions.

In Chowa’s study “Testing a Community-Informed Curriculum to Address Social and Mental Health Needs of Youth on the Galápagos Islands: An Implementation Mapping Approach,” her team developed a 12-week mental health education certificate co-taught by Carolina and local Universidad San Francisco de Quito faculty; Masa’s study “A Community-Driven Approach to Stigma Reduction and HIV Prevention in Young Latino Sexual Minority Men in North Carolina,” identified multi-level resilience and resistance strategies used by Latino sexual minority men to overcome stigma and more effectively use HIV prevention services; and Wanyama identified facilitators, barriers and key links between services and community-based organizations for mental health services for adolescent girls and young women in Burundi.

Chowa added that when conducting community-engaged research it’s important to remain flexible while working within the cultural norms of the community.

“You don’t want to be seen as trying to ‘fix’ anyone’s culture,” Chowa said. “That’s not your culture and it’s not your job to ‘fix’ it. Our approach is to work with local people to see how to address issues because they are the experts (of their communities). The solutions they come up with may not always be the solutions we want or expected, but it goes back to community ownership and what works best for them.”

 

Friday, Jan. 17

“Interdisciplinary Interventions to Address Medical Financial Hardship across the Healthcare System: A Social Ecological Approach”

Led by UNC School of Social Work Assistant Professor Bridgette Thom, the roundtable discussion “Interdisciplinary Interventions to Address Medical Financial Hardship across the Healthcare System: A Social Ecological Approach” featured four speakers who examined how patients with chronic and acute health conditions are affected by medical-related financial hardship at personal and systematic levels.

Thom opened the roundtable at the 29th annual SSWR conference with a sobering statistic — more Americans are concerned about the financial impact of cancer (57%) than dying from cancer (54%). The stress due to the financial ramifications of cancer treatment, especially for young adults, leads to a decreased quality of life, lower satisfaction of care, and a lower adherence to treatment.

“This affordability crisis that we are facing is caused by all sectors of the health care system,” Thom said, “from the pharmaceutical and biotech industries, the health care providers and the medical/hospital systems within which they exist, medical billing practices, coding practices, and the payers’ insurance.

“The health care system is not in a bubble and exists within our own broken society of systemic racism, structural inequality … all of these broader systemic societal issues that form the capitalistic systems in which our health care system exists.”

The participants applied a health care-focused adaptation of the Social Ecological Model — a framework that considers the influence between individuals, interpersonal relationships, communities and larger society to understand health outcomes and behaviors — to discuss potential interventions to prevent financial hardship.

The roundtable featured:

  • Samantha Watson (Samantha Watson Consulting), a two-time cancer survivor and community-based patient advocate who discussed the impact of financial hardship;
  • Meredith Doherty (University of Pennsylvania), a clinical social worker and academic researcher who discussed current interventions at the patient level;
  • Eucharia Borden (Family Reach), an oncology social worker who serves as the vice president of programs for Health Equity at Family Reach, a nonprofit that provides financial support for families facing cancer; and
  • Fumiko Chino (MD Anderson Cancer Center), a radiation oncologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center.

During the roundtable, speakers discussed financial toxicity at the personal and system levels, sharing ways that systems can change to help patients deal with the financial fallout from cancer treatment.

Watson shared her personal cancer survivor story which led to her starting a nonprofit that provides grants to young adult cancer patients.

“There is a ripple effect that’s not felt by just the patient, but by the people around them,” Watson said. “(Young adults) are new to health care; they’re new to self-advocacy; they’re new to all of this. It’s a very challenging experience not just for the person on the receiving end of that bill, but for everyone else in that household that may be affected.”

Doherty added that nearly 40% of people with cancer deplete their life assets in two years and shared interventions that could help mitigate the stress that comes with the financial burden of care. Financial navigation — identifying patients at risk and helping them optimize their health insurance, develop out-of-pocket cost estimate plans, and apply for hospital-based or co-pay assistance programs — have been shown to help reduce anxiety, save money, and lead to better treatment adherence.

Borden highlighted the need to help connect community resources to provide financial assistance. Her nonprofit connects different vendors to leverage partnerships and resources within a community, while also providing some direct financial support to patients to help combat poverty.

“Even when patients advocate, they still may not get what they need,” Borden said. “There is ongoing need because part of the bigger issue is poverty. Cancer happens in a life that was already happening; a life that people were already living. When you’re struggling to make ends meet and cancer shows up, it certainly doesn’t make things better.”

Chino closed the discussion with interventions at the national level, calling for continued national advocacy around Medicaid reform, insurance design changes, and streamlining prior authorization.

 

“Dyadic Health Research: Promise, Pitfalls, and Emerging Directions”

While most social work research uses the individual as the unit of study, a 29th annual SSWR conference roundtable on dyadic health research spotlighted what can be learned from studying pairs.

“Dyadic Health Research: Promise, Pitfalls, and Emerging Directions,” featured two UNC School of Social Work researchers, Assistant Professor Tess Thompson and Associate Professor Joy Noel Baumgartner.

Thompson, who organized the session, opened with a brief overview of the theoretical foundations and key terminology central to dyadic research, recognizing that the methodology is not yet widely taught or implemented in the field. At the core of this approach is its focus on dyads — pairs of individuals, such as spouses, a parent and child, or a patient and their provider — and the influences they have on one another.

Thompson noted that social work researchers are accustomed to viewing people through a biopsychosocial lens, considering not only the biological and psychological factors affecting them, but also the role of their social environments. Dyadic research is a particularly useful tool in this respect because it examines the impact of key relationships on individual outcomes. This enables researchers to study some of the primary social influences on a person’s life while at the same time limiting the variables involved enough to allow for manageable and accurate analysis.

Despite these important benefits, Thompson acknowledged that dyadic health research does have some disadvantages. The addition of another individual to the unit of study adds a layer of complexity to modeling as well as to the processes of structuring and analyzing data. Given that most social work students don’t receive training in dyadic research, she emphasized the importance of mentors experienced in the methodology for providing guidance to those interested in conducting this kind of work.

Dyadic research with cancer patients and caregivers

Thompson then presented her own research with dyads consisting of cancer patients and their informal caregivers, such as family members, friends or partners. She is currently conducting the Health Outcomes and Pairs’ Experiences (HOPE) study, which will use surveys and qualitative interviews with patients and caregivers to examine how unmet social needs — including food, housing and transportation — are associated with physical and mental health outcomes among patient-caregiver pairs.

While previous research has investigated the impact of unmet social needs on patient well-being, this study is among the first to explore these factors in relation to caregivers. The study also questioned assumptions about the nature of patient-caregiver relationships, such as that each member of the pair has a set role, with caregivers exclusively serving as resources for patients. In reality, Thompson explained, these relationships are often much more nuanced and bidirectional, with patients frequently offering forms of support to their caregivers as well.

Thompson’s extensive use of dyadic methods for studying cancer patients and their caregivers led her, together with a small team of other researchers, to develop the Dyadic Cancer Outcomes Framework. This framework incorporates the trajectory of the patient’s disease and their social context, includes caregivers with a range of relationships to the patients they care for and examines a variety of both individual- and dyad-level predictors and outcomes.

Dyadic research on mental health in Tanzania

Baumgartner’s presentation also focused on dyadic research conducted with patients and their caregivers but within a different population: adults living with psychotic disorders in Tanzania. Noting that context is particularly important for understanding global health research, she began with a brief introduction to the cultural context and health care environment of Tanzania.

There is a significant treatment gap in the care available for those living with psychotic disorders in lower-income countries. In Tanzania specifically, health insurance is rare and there are no disability benefits or other social safety nets to support patients. As such, family plays a critical role in providing care and social support for patients, including those with mental illness.

Given the centrality of family to patient care in Tanzania, Baumgartner found a dyadic approach that considered both patients and their informal caregivers better suited for her research aims than methods focusing on the patient alone. Sharing a key lesson she learned from this work, Baumgartner said, “To support patients, we need to invest in caregivers as well.”

She is currently conducting a research project that examines family psychoeducation as an intervention for supporting individuals living with schizophrenia. The pilot study yielded promising results, and Baumgartner is optimistic about its implications for interventions informed by dyadic health research more broadly.

For her work in global health, she noted, the methodology’s ability to aid in the development of interventions that meet cultural and contextual needs is especially important. Baumgartner found it particularly useful for generating evidence regarding the independent effects of families on patient outcomes and understanding the mechanisms of action, such as hopefulness, that inform family-based interventions.

Despite its significant benefits, however, she also acknowledged that this approach could present novel challenges for researchers. These include considerable logistical factors, such as the complicated nature of recruitment and follow-up processes when studying paired participants and the difficulty of navigating a reporting process not designed with dyadic research in mind. Ethical considerations and issues of patient-provider confidentiality can add a further layer of complexity to this research.

During a Q&A period that followed the session, several attendees shared their similar challenges when attempting to conduct dyadic health research and expressed gratitude for the opportunity to meet and learn from other researchers working in this under-explored area.

Thompson echoed this sentiment in her own reflection on the session.

“Research examining dyads, or pairs of people, can be a wonderful tool for conducting social work research, but it’s not covered in most graduate coursework,” Thompson said. “This session was a great opportunity to bring together scholars from different institutions to discuss how to use dyadic research to advance social work science.”

 

“Transforming Careers in Mental Health for BIPOC: Mentoring Strategies to Promote Healing and Social Change”

Social work scholars Linda F. Chang and Linda Lausell Bryant convened a roundtable discussion at the 29th annual SSWR conference on “Transforming Careers in Mental Health for BIPOC: Mentoring Strategies to Promote Healing and Social Change” — a title which evoked a book the two colleagues from New York University Silver School of Social Work co-edited in 2024.

“The social work profession cannot abide by its person-in-environment lens while simultaneously denying the host of environmental inequities that impact people and their social functioning and outcomes,” the planners said.

They asked panelists at various stages in their careers as social work scholars to talk about the importance of mentorship and about other tools and strategies they had identified to “resist, persist and persevere towards progress.”

The two moderators and colleagues are a practicing psychologist and assistant professor (Chang) and the associate dean for academic affairs (Lausell-Bryant) at NYU Silver School of Social Work.

Their post-luncheon afternoon roundtable format included panelist presentations, participant discussion, and an intimate setting for consultation in small-group and one-on-one settings with each panelist.

Discussion centered on professional challenges and concerns facing BIPOC researchers, clinicians and administrators in expanding their impact and their ranks to better meet the mental health needs of historically under-represented communities.

The session opened with introductions from each of the four panelists representing one or multiple aspects of academic research professionals: NYU Ph.D. candidate Fatima Mabrouk, incoming University of Michigan Assistant Professor Nari Yoo, NYU Assistant Professor Dale Maglalang, and Society for Social Work and Research President and UNC School of Social Work Dean Ramona Denby-Brinson.

After a brief introduction of her academic career including two decades as a full professor at four different R1 universities, Denby-Brinson personally introduced herself by saying simply, “I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”

She went on to share how important to her that powerful reference to the Maya Angelou poem “Still I Rise” continues to be within academia, and why.

Others shared the long-term and sometimes life-changing effects of a mentor’s support on their careers. Examples ranged from a father who drove his daughter to graduate school every day after he retired in order to lift her up during a challenging period; to a fellow first-generation Ph.D. candidate who scheduled monthly brunches with a master’s student to allow ample time for questions and support; to a BIPOC dissertation chair who helped an international Ph.D. candidate navigate visa issues during the job interview process rather than offer “it’ll be fine” encouragement; to a junior faculty member whose self-care included saying “no” to some things — even if they could be considered intentional and positive — to allow space to focus on the work they needed to do to become the kind of researcher they aspired to be.

Before breaking into smaller conversational groups, organizers encouraged the attendees to be very intentional about creating affirming spaces that could act as buffers in challenging times.

Denby-Brinson urged those panelists and audience members early in their careers to remember they were in their roles not because they had been given a chance but because they had earned the opportunity to be at the table.

“Your work has merit,” she said in making that distinction, “and there is no reason to move with an apologetic posture in doing it.”

Mabrouk closed with a creative driving analogy to describe how she used affirmative spaces, moments set aside for pure fun, mentorship, and other tools to enable her to do what was described as the emotional labor required of a BIPOC Ph.D. candidate.

“I get so much out of harnessing the power of research,” she said. “I’m here, and I’m just going to park it here,” she said. “I’m not leaving!”

 

Student Poster Presentations

A pair of UNC School of Social Work doctoral students had the opportunity to share their work in the hotel’s Grand Ballroom during Friday’s afternoon poster session at the 29th annual SSWR conference.

Doctoral student and research assistant David French, a first-year Ph.D. student who graduated from the School last May with his MSW, shared his poster “Impacting Parenting Skill and Child Development: An Evaluation of the Triple P Parenting Program.” French’s research interests include substance use disorders and finding strategies to enhance the availability and accessibility of housing and related educational interventions for unhoused adolescents and adults.

French’s study sought to provide qualitative research on parenting interventions, specifically regarding the Triple P parenting program.

“This project is part of my master’s program,” French said. “I wanted to do an evaluative study of an intervention, and the Triple P program is an intervention that’s connected to INSPIRED Lab that I’m a part of at the School.” Sandra Reeves Spears and John B. Turner Distinguished Professor of Social Work Trenette Clark Goings is the director of the INSPIRED Lab.

Clark Goings’ SAMHSA-funded research program has enrolled 180 parents and caregivers in Triple P since 2021. Using a qualitative thematic analysis, French conducted phone interviews to assess parental participants’ perspectives of the Triple P program’s material, structure and comprehensiveness, as well as examine observed behavioral and relationships changes in the parent-child relationship.

“The study gave us a look into the parent’s perspective of the program and how the material transitioned into their daily lives with their kids when it came to positive relationship maintenance, child behavioral modification, and communication,” French said. “We found good things. Parents reported that the material led to mostly positive changes. Parents saw good communication with their kids when it came to negotiating chores, homework and behavioral reinforcement.”

Feedback from the participants suggested that the program was a valuable resource for parents and that interventions like Triple P could play a crucial role in the evolution of parenting interventions.

“Mostly it’s about just starting conversations,” French said. “One of our goals at the INSPIRED Lab is to get parents to start having conversations with their kids. Triple P opens the door for those conversations.”

Examining crime victim services

Joining French in the ballroom was doctoral student Ally Waters. Waters, a second-year Ph.D. student, focuses her research on the areas of mental health and criminal legal systems and substance use and addiction studies. She was the recipient of Carolina’s Graduate Certificate in Participatory Research 2024 Seed Grant Award.

Waters’ poster “Variation in Perceived Adequacy of Services for Victims of Crime from Marginalized Groups: Results from Logistic Regression of Organizational Survey Data” examined the relationship between organizational characteristics and staff perceptions that victims of crime who belong to marginalized groups are adequately served in the community.

The study is part of a larger multi-method, community-engaged needs assessment of services for victims of crime in North Carolina that focused on service needs, availability, accessibility and adequacy for members of underserved or marginalized groups. The larger study is led by Research Associate Professor Tonya Van Deinse and Associate Professor Cynthia Fraga Rizo.

Through a web-based survey, Waters received responses from 330 organizations, ranging from law enforcement agencies, crime victim service organizations, and organizations serving culturally specific groups. Her results found that law enforcement agencies were 4.5-8.8 times more likely to indicate that services for victims of crime were adequate than crime victim service organizations and organizations serving culturally specific groups.

“Our data showed that law enforcement organizations perceived crime victim services as more likely to be adequate compared to the other two groups,” Waters said. “We dug in deeper; the trend held up across service types for groups known to often be underserved by crime victim services.”

That result contradicted findings from her research team’s larger study and others that found considerable gaps in service availability and adequacy.

“It’s notable since a lot of crime victim services are located within law enforcement communities,” Waters said. “If law enforcement groups perceive services as adequate, they may be less likely to change them.

“We also wondered if law enforcement perceptions reflect the perception of the people receiving the services and victims of crime. Are law enforcement groups more aware of services because they provide them, or is the group of ‘not law enforcement’ more attuned to the needs of the victims of crime?”

Waters said that there’s good follow-up potential from the survey findings and that talking to victims of crime to learn more about their lived experiences is a good starting point for future studies.

 

“Whose facts matter!? – Part Two: Epistemic justice & professional values in faculty recruitment, promotion, tenure, and merit processes”

In a special second-part symposium following its success from 2024, “Whose facts matter!? – Part Two: Epistemic justice and professional values in faculty recruitment, promotion, tenure, and merit processes” asked attendees to consider epistemic injustice and its effects on faculty recruitment, hiring and career advancement.

UNC School of Social Work Dean Ramona Denby-Brinson was included in the seven-person panel at the 29th annual SSWR conference with participants from The University of Chicago, New York University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Arizona State University, and the University of Georgia.

Epistemic injustice is unfairness or bias related to knowledge, especially when a victim is ignored because of their identity or when their experiences are not well understood due to historic exclusion.

It often presents itself in academia when academics judge the type of research being conducted by their peers, which journals they’re published in, and who receives tenure.

While introducing the topic and the symposium speakers, Denby-Brinson mentioned how epistemic injustice shows up in how academics evaluate one another’s work. She also highlighted the need to bring to light the ways researchers and educators can be overlooked because of their background.

“We avoid these difficult conversations because as social workers we’ve been trained to be polite and not say the tough and controversial things,” Denby-Brinson said. “But sometimes, that impedes progress, too.”

Gina Samuels, a professor with The University of Chicago, said the symposium was the start of a conversation about who social workers are and who they should be in academia.

“This is a call to social work science to invest in and be accountable to our professional values and ethics,” Samuels said. “This requires seeing and disrupting spaces of epistemic injustice in our practices of knowledge work. This requires us to be open; to be critical, self-reflexive and have some self-awareness of how we’ve made choices over the course of our own careers to practice the kind of knowledge work we do and feel discomfort.”

Samuels shared two types of epistemic injustice:

  • Testimonial injustice: Wrongs committed against a person by dismissing their knowledge because they are deemed not credible based on their identity or status; and
  • Hermeneutical injustice: Wrongs committed when people are prevented from understanding or sharing their own lived experiences.

These types of injustices can manifest in academia when it comes to how a study’s value is determined, what is counted as data, who funds research, who determines advance within an academy, who gatekeeps publications, and what type of research is rewarded in social work.

Samuels added that this is often seen in the expectation for researchers to produce at a torrid pace that’s centered, in part, in academia’s historic culture of quantity over quality, sense of urgency, and worship of the written word.

“It creates an ‘Us versus them (mentality)’ … increases pressure to produce at a pace that is unhealthy, causes us to distance and disembody from our work, and to compete rather than to collaborate authentically with each other, and causes us to undermine our social work values,” Samuels said. “The current ideas of productivity, worth and success are harming us.”

The panelists also shared their experiences and their advice for combating epistemic injustice:

  • David R. Hodge, Arizona State University: Called to examine the tenure and promotion process, making room for research topics that aren’t mainstream, innovative funding sources and diverse research methods, and promoting work published in social work journals.
  • Darcey Merritt, The University of Chicago: Reminded the audience to think about how the context of early scholars’ past experiences shaped how current social workers navigate research, the social work academy, and tenure and promotion, along with reminding them to never think their work is “too ambitious.”
  • Michelle Munson, New York University: Advised the audience members to learn how to be themselves in academic spaces and to not be afraid to let their own lived experiences guide their research and work. She also told audience members to find their social support, recovery communities, and circles of trust.
  • Marci Ybarra, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison: Commented on the culture shock of joining a primarily white institution and suggested the audience examine systemic issues like funding sources, journals, and not discarding inclusion ideas when they’re no longer seen as useful.
  • Philip Hong, University of Georgia: Encouraged the audience to examine how to keep social work and its values within their work and find their own route, even if the road is lonely.

 

Saturday, Jan. 18

“Social Identities, Non-Affirming Cultural Environments, and Mental Health Among Sexual Minority Adolescents”

At a poster session at the 29th annual SSWR conference, UNC School of Social Work Assistant Professor Ankur Srivastava presented his research examining the relationship between racial and ethnic identification, non-affirming cultural environments, and mental health outcomes among sexual minority adolescents.

His poster, “Social Identities, Non-Affirming Cultural Environments, and Mental Health Among Sexual Minority Adolescents,” exhibited the findings of a study Srivastava conducted with a team consisting of several members of the School of Social Work, including Associate Professor Will Hall and doctoral students Denise Williams, Pin-Chen Chiang, Jake Leite, and Adam Englert, as well as Masters & Johnson Distinguished Professor of Sexual Health and Education Jeremy Goldbach of Washington University in St. Louis.

Sexual minority adolescents have consistently been found to report poorer mental health than their heterosexual peers, and existing evidence indicates that non-affirming cultural environments may exacerbate stressors that contribute to these negative mental health outcomes. Seeking to better understand the factors influencing this relationship, Srivastava and his research team designed a study to investigate two key questions:

  1. What are the predictors of experiencing minority stress from non-affirming cultural environments?
  2. What is the association between non-affirming cultural environments and mental health among sexual minority adolescents?

The study used data derived from a large national survey of sexual minority adolescents. Analysis of survey responses revealed that individuals who identified as belonging to any non-white racial group reported higher levels of stress associated with non-affirming racial/ethnic environments than their white peers. Findings were more mixed, however, on the impacts of non-affirming religious environments, with only Black/African and Latino/Hispanic respondents reporting higher stress scores in comparison to white respondents.

When examining the mental health impacts of such environments on sexual minority adolescents, the researchers found both non-affirming religious environments and non-affirming cultural environments were associated with higher reported levels of depression and anxiety among respondents.

Taken together, these findings indicate that sexual minority adolescents who are also members of racial or ethnic minority groups may experience greater negative mental health outcomes due to the conflicting values and norms associated with belonging to other social groups.

This has important implications for practices and interventions that seek to address the negative mental health outcomes and self-concepts often experienced by sexual minority youth. To be effective, Srivastava noted, such efforts must employ an intersectional lens, taking into account the impacts of multiple social identities and cultural environments.

Speaking about the broader significance of this research, Srivastava said, “As we head into uncertain times, it is more important that we understand how young people’s experiences of nonconforming identities and environments they live in shape their health and well-being trajectories. And it is imperative that we understand and incorporate this information in the work we do to support our young people.”

 

“Holistic Evaluation to Advance Research in Dementia (HEARD): Measuring the Wellbeing of Persons Living with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias”

UNC School of Social Work doctoral student Lea Efird-Green presented a flash talk under the banner of “Mental and Cognitive Health” at the 29th annual SSWR conference, alongside organizer Christina Miyawaki from the University of Houston, and faculty members Katherine Mommaerts from Northern Arizona University, and Bronwyn Keefe and Jordana Muroff from Boston University.

Efird-Green, the project manager for the National Institutes of Health R22 Holistic Evaluation to Advance Research in Dementia (HEARD) Project through the UNC Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, began by reviewing the broad parameters: 55 million people are currently living with Alzheimer’s disease or related dementia globally, with 10 million added every year, and it is thought that these numbers drastically underestimate the diagnoses.

She discussed the challenge of developing effective evaluative measures to assess the well-being of people living with dementia, particularly those which originate from a strength-based, self-determinative standpoint.

She then reviewed work to date on “Holistic Evaluation to Advance Research in Dementia (HEARD): Measuring the Wellbeing of Persons Living with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias,” an NIH R22 (concluded) and R33 (ongoing) study which are developing and testing two well-being measures: the Living Well with Dementia Inventory (LWDI) and the one-item Quality of Day Scale (QODS).

Efird-Green described the design-thinking approach used to develop the initial measures, which were created in conjunction with a steering council; numerous focus groups of people living with dementia (PLWD); observations; and expert advisory panels. She also articulated the use of pilot testing, first with 15 patients and then with 20 PLWD-and-caretaker partners or “dyads,” to evaluate measurement stability and reliability; and the measurement validity by way of comparisons to established quality of life measures.

She reviewed positive findings of the R22 study with the audience members, who showed enthusiasm for learning the outcome of the ongoing R33 analysis where the goal was to look at 120 dyads in community/assisted living/skilled nursing settings using the same evaluative measures to determine their reliability and validity (construct, content, and concurrent), as well as potential floor or ceiling effects.

“The LWDI and QODS are innovative measures that use a positive reframing of the experience of PLWD to focus on living well (process) and wellbeing (outcome),” Efird-Green shared in writing. “These measures, once validated in the R33 phase and in further research, represent an opportunity to develop and test interventions and modify care planning to promote holistic wellbeing for people living with dementia, rather than solely focusing on cognitive and physical functioning.”

The first-year Ph.D. student is working with University Kenan Distinguished Professor Sheryl Zimmerman, who serves as the School’s associate dean for research and faculty development, and additional co-investigators from Quinnipiac University, The Pennsylvania State University, and the Alzheimer’s Association. Her research interests include systemic and policy interventions in the field of aging, the long-term care workforce, and intersections among aging, rural, and immigrant populations.

“Working with Sheryl Zimmerman through both the UNC School of Social Work and the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at Carolina has allowed me to manage diverse aging-related projects and work with a variety of aging services policymakers, providers, researchers, and consumers,” Efird-Green said.

 

“When Is Maltreatment Confirmed? Using Unsupervised Machine Learning to Advance Understanding of Child Protective Services Decisions”

When it comes to childhood maltreatment, not all cases are created equal.

That’s what UNC School of Social Work alumnus and University of Colorado Assistant Professor Claire McNellan ’25 (Ph.D.) analyzed in her study “When Is Maltreatment Confirmed? Using Unsupervised Machine Learning to Advance Understanding of Child Protective Services Decisions,” at the 29th annual SSWR conference.

McNellan’s work aimed to clarify the factors that may contribute to the confirmation — also called substantiation — of childhood maltreatment cases to child protective services. Reports to CPS are often subjective, relying on definitions and evidentiary standards that can vary across states. These shifting criteria for what types of referrals are upgraded to substantiated reports could further entrench racial and socioeconomic inequalities.

Previous academic approaches to understanding substantiation have looked at the average child maltreatment case, but McNellan says, “we know there’s no average child or family.”

“We’re talking about a really complex situation,” McNellan said. “Families have very complex needs and risk factors, so the reliance on central tendency measures is an imperfect way to approach this.”

For her study, McNellan used de-identified administrative records from California’s child welfare data collection system. Of the more than 900,000 referrals for children 5 and under from 2013—20, 26% had a substantiated maltreatment report.

McNellan analyzed data using a technique that clumped results into clusters to help explain substantiation as an outcome. She found that different configurations of attributes (e.g., child age, types of allegations, who made the initial report) led to different types of substantiation (e.g., medical concerns about infants, poly-allegation families, White rural families).

McNellan said the results reiterate key indicators of risk of CPS involvement, including reports that include infants or neglect. This data helps identify patterns that result in maltreatment confirmations and can inform work that helps standardize and improve the consistency of decision making.

“We can ask, ‘When we control for what kinds of cases county CPS agencies see, and what characteristics come to their attention, do we see that they’re substantiating these clusters at different rates?’” McNellan asked. “We do see that (cases are treated differently), even when presented with a similar (traits and characteristics).”

McNellan wonders if there’s a better way to document the concepts of evidence, harm, and service needs and whether agencies should record these things separately rather than group them together through substantiation.

“Differentiating between those things would improve the way we talk about what interventions are appropriate and help improve outcomes for children and families,” she said.

 

“Geospatial Variation of CPS Reports of School Aged Children”

Assistant Professor Rebecca Rebbe organized a symposium entitled “Communities & Child Welfare: Investigating the Role of Place-Based Inequalities,” inviting panelists Kathryn Maguire-Jack from the University of Michigan, Yun Young Kim from the University of Illinois, and John Prindle from the University of Southern California to present at the 29th annual SSWR conference. Rebbe then introduced discussant Bridgette Lery from the Urban Institute to review the symposium presenters’ findings.

Associate Professor Maguire-Jack acted as presenting author of “A Spatial Analysis Comparing Urban and Rural Neighborhood Characteristics and Maltreatment.”

She reviewed her team’s recent work mapping child maltreatment rates in Michigan across both rural and urban census tracts. She noted that recent data indicate a growth in reports of suspected abuse/neglect in rural versus urban census areas (31 per 1,000 children; compared to 16 per 1,000) and juxtaposed that against a noted urban bias in the literature on child welfare.

Her team’s findings indicate that some factors (socioeconomic disadvantage, residential instability and childcare burden) are consistent with existing literature on urban neighborhoods, but did not align in data related to rural census tracts. The study also found that “Poverty and vacant housing rates are related to child maltreatment in rural census tracts (similar to urban tracts); but contrary to findings in urban areas, unemployment was not related to maltreatment in rural areas.”

Maguire noted that further study at an in-depth, qualitative level was needed when asking whether unique cultural differences might need to be considered in building up robust prevention programs in rural areas.

Young Kim, a doctoral student from the University of Illinois, was the presenting author of a cross-sectional analysis of child poverty and maltreatment report rates from the American Community Survey data by subtypes across Illinois zip codes from 2014-18 of 1,383 zip codes.

The research looked for linkages between poverty and child neglect, physical abuse and sexual abuse. The research findings, Kim and University of Illinois Assistant Professor Hyunil Kim wrote, indicate that “Community poverty emerges as a significant risk factor not only for neglect but also for physical and sexual abuse, indicating that community poverty may elevate the overall risk of child maltreatment regardless of its type. This emphasizes the importance of addressing all forms of child maltreatment within efforts aimed at poverty alleviation.”

Kim stressed that association was not causation, noting the question of poverty being misinterpreted as neglect before pointing out that further research could continue to ask if for families in high poverty, conditions exist that increase the risk of all types of maltreatment.

Research Associate Professor Prindle from the University of Southern California (USC) reviewed data from his research “Examining the Relationship for Out-of-home Placement in Early Childhood and Adolescent Placements in a California Cohort,” concluding that “While there are neighborhood-level differences in the socioeconomic influences for adolescent out-of-home placements, there are also regional differences in how those at risk do get placed in out-of-home care. Policy should examine how allocation of resources matches socioeconomic characteristics of communities to address long-term risks of child welfare interactions.”

Rebbe presented “Geospatial Variation of CPS Reports of School Aged Children,” reviewing data analysis of child protective services (CPS) administrative data from California across four years for children aged 5–17 years old. Rebbe and UNC School of Social Work colleague David Ansong, along with Prindle and Andrea Lane Eastman from USC, sought to look at the relationship of CPS report rates by reporter type with community-level characteristics and to evaluate if there was geospatial heterogeneity among those relationships.

The researchers found that CPS report rates vary across communities, and this is consistent when disaggregated by reporter type. The variations have relationships with community characteristics (economics, housing and urbanicity, for example); but there is heterogeneity among these relationships by reporter type and by geography.

Rebbe noted that, “These findings suggest that prevention efforts and mandated reporting trainings may need to be customized for different communities and types of mandated reporters. Further research is necessary to understand the geospatial variation of child maltreatment and child protection responses.” 

 

“Childhood Predictors of Perceived Structural Stigma in Queer Adults”

UNC School of Social Work doctoral student Jake Leite shared his poster “Childhood Predictors of Perceived Structural Stigma in Queer Adults” at the 29th annual SSWR conference. His presentation reported the findings of a study conducted with a team of School of Social Work researchers that included Associate Professor Will Hall, Assistant Professor Ankur Srivastava, and doctoral students Denise Williams, Pin-Chen Chiang and Adam Englert.

The project was informed by the contemporary political climate in the United States, which increasingly includes policies aimed at restricting the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ individuals.

Such structural stigmas — forms of social bias that exist on a macro level within systems and add to the disadvantages already experienced by members of socially marginalized communities — have long affected queer individuals in the United States. However, the factors that influence individual perceptions of structural stigma among the nation’s queer adult population have yet to be investigated.

Recognizing this gap, Leite and his research team decided to examine the relationship between perceptions of structural stigma among queer adults and their childhood exposure to pro- and anti-queer environmental factors.

Their study used a diverse, cross-sectional national sample of 500 self-identified queer adults. Via an online survey, participants provided demographic data, including their age, race and sexual orientation, as well as information about factors that shaped their early development, such as their religious upbringing, familial political ideology, and childhood exposure to publicly identifying (out) queer individuals. They also completed assessments measuring the degree of homophobic messaging they received during childhood and their current perceptions of structural stigma.

The research team analyzed this data using a multivariate regression model to predict how and to what extent childhood environmental factors influence perceptions of structural stigma in adulthood.

This analysis revealed that the reported sexual orientation of participants was a statistically significant predictor of their perceptions of structural stigma, with individuals who identified as gay or lesbian being less likely to detect anti-queer structural stigma than those who identified as bisexual or pansexual.

In addition, queer adults who reported receiving homophobic messaging in childhood from school or the media were found to perceive lesser levels of structural stigma against queer people. This was also the case for participants who grew up in families with conservative political ideologies.

These findings indicate that perceptions of stigma are influenced by early exposure to anti-queer structural systems and may be formed at the community level rather than individually. This has important implications for addressing anti-queer structural stigma, as it suggests that aiming to change social perceptions and opinions of queer identities on a broader scale may be a more effective approach than focusing on discrete political issues.

Leite hopes this study helps grow and expand the body of social work research focused on the intersection of policy and the queer population, but he also wants his work to reach and positively impact the queer community itself. With a background in organizing, Leite recognizes that the insights gleaned from this kind of research have the potential to inform organizing efforts and political strategy, which could be increasingly necessary considering the mounting challenges facing the nation’s queer community.

“It’s nice to see an increase in queer political research at the conference this year,” he said, noting the presence of several research projects focusing on political factors impacting LGBTQ+ populations, including multiple from UNC School of Social Work researchers. “Anti-queer policy is going to be important in social work, especially in the coming four years.

 

Sunday, Jan. 19

“Redlining Across Systems: The Experiences of Black Behavioral Healthcare Business Owners and Strategies to Support Them”

“Innovating organizations: Forms, structures, and missions” was the broad theme for a series of discussions at the 29th annual SSWR conference, including a presentation by Assistant Professor Sonyia Richardson from UNC School of Social Work and co-presenter Isis Bey, a doctoral student from UNC-Charlotte.

Richard and Bey’s findings were presented alongside other SSWR presentations from a Hunter College faculty member on South Korean platform workers; a scholarly inquiry out of MacEwan University into the experience of funding-to-nonprofit relationship inquiry on the micro level in Canada; and a research lecture from the University of Toronto on supporting growth and sustainability of social purpose driven for-profit activities in human service organizations.

Richardson has been a behavioral health business owner in Charlotte, N.C., for nearly two decades. Also known for her community-engaged scholarship on preventing suicide in Black adolescents, Richardson remains committed to serving her local community through her private practice.

“Quitting doesn’t feel like an option,” said the former UNC-Charlotte faculty member about her Charlotte-based practice. “Access to mental health services is a documented public health crisis, especially for racially and ethnically diverse communities. Diverse providers are essential to addressing this shortage. My community needs me.”

Richardson and Bey co-presented research that links their scholarly and direct practice interests, opening with this statistic: Of 1.2 million registered minority-owned businesses in the United States, 30% of them are in health care/social services fields.

The co-presenters went on to discuss the exploratory qualitative study completed by their team in examining business-related needs of Black behavioral health entrepreneurs from a systems-level perspective. They also identified ways to support sustaining, successful businesses.

The team also included UNC-Charlotte doctoral student Na’Cole Wilson, UNC School of Social Work Research Lab Manager Margaret Phipps-Bennett, and Marvin Ridge High School student Sanvi Kadekoppa, who assists in Richardson’s lab. The team worked alongside partners from ASPIRE Community Capital and participating community members. The presenters noted that after data had been collected and analyzed and the original manuscript of a forthcoming paper had been written, Richardson joined the board of ASPIRE.

The presenters outlined the challenges faced by behavioral health care owners in underserved communities and providers around themes related to finance, stigma, knowledge acquisition and licensure (see chart).

Richardson and Bey proposed several potential systems-level solutions, in particular detailing how the development of business skills targeted to the unique challenges of behavioral health care businesses could be one strategy in reaching underserved communities. The presenters noted that the training could go beyond general business and marketing guidance, to more specifically focus on billing and revenue cycles, an understanding of insurance company credentialing, and a familiarity with contracting for workforce support, for example.

“If we want to fix this, we must think about systems-wide solutions,” Richardson said. “If I want to address suicide prevention, for example, I need to strengthen the pipeline of licensed clinical social workers. And I need to help increase the number of thriving behavioral health businesses owned by the talented practitioners in my community.”

With the help of additional partners, Richardson and Bey would like to create and administer a 12-week pilot business development program tailored to behavioral health business owners. They proposed following up that 12-week program with a qualitative study that sought to adapt the curriculum to better meet future participants’ needs.

Richardson and Bey are currently preparing to publish their study results in a leading peer-reviewed journal dedicated to current research and practice in nonprofit and public sector human service organizations.

Beyond the conference, Richardson remains active in research and advocacy. Last month, she co-authored “Factors Associated With Suicide Risk Behavior Outcomes Among Black Middle School Adolescents” in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She also participated in SAMHSA’s Behavioral Health Equity policy summit and co-authored a paper on engaging Black faith-based organizations to expand mental health access. At the 2025 SSWR conference, she also presented “A Community-Based Approach to Increasing Access to Mental Health Services: The Inclusion of Black Faith-Based Organizations.”

 

“Culturally and Community Grounded Health and Mental Health in Latinx Populations”

In the United States, young Latino sexual minority men (YLSMM) are disproportionately impacted by HIV and face a range of stigmas related to their intersectional identities.

In their presentation at the 29th annual SSWR conference, UNC School of Social Work doctoral student Dicky Baruah shared how they used vignettes as an innovative tool in research aimed at understanding the stigma experienced by YLSMM and informing interventions tailored to this population. The title of the presentation was, “Development and Use of Vignettes in HIV Prevention Research with Young Latino Sexual Minority Men (YLSMM).”

Baruah’s cross-disciplinary research team included UNC School of Social Work Associate Professor Rainier Masa, researchers from UNC’s School of Nursing and Emory University, and members of community-partner organization El Centro Hispano.

Together, they conducted a study that sought to discover how vignettes can be developed to reflect the experiences of YLSMM, and how those vignettes can be used in HIV research.

Phase one of the study focused on creating vignettes. These short narratives about fictional YLSMM featured hypothetical scenarios designed to reflect the real lived experiences of the population. To ensure their authenticity, researchers built the vignettes around themes derived from qualitative data elicited from YLSMM and produced them in bilingual, audiovisual formats.

The first step of this process involved recruiting a small sample of YLSMM living in North Carolina to participate in the study. Baruah acknowledged that partnering with El Centro Hispano, a well-established organization serving the state’s Hispanic/Latino/Latinx population, was key in enabling the study to reach and enroll participants who might otherwise have been wary of researchers who didn’t come from their community or share their intersectional identities.

Next, the team conducted focus group discussions and in-depth individual interviews with YLSMM study participants, focusing particularly on their reports of experiencing and coping with stigma. Using the qualitative data from these interviews, researchers then performed thematic analysis to identify common themes.

Finally, they worked with community partners to collaboratively craft vignettes based on these themes, which went through an extensive vetting and revision process with community members before being finalized.

In phase two of the study, which is currently ongoing, Baruah and their fellow researchers are using these vignettes to develop interventions aimed at reducing intersectional stigma among YLSSM.

When asked what makes vignettes a particularly beneficial method for studying this population, Baruah’s answer was simple: “relatability.”

While this trait makes vignettes useful for conducting research with any population, Baruah explained that relatable narratives are particularly impactful when working with groups that experience marginalization and stigma and when discussing sensitive topics because they increase participants’ comfort with the research process. This allows them to more easily access and share in-depth information about their beliefs, experiences, and decision-making processes.

Going forward, Baruah and their research team hope this form of person-centered and community-engaged research can help inform the development of culturally responsive strategies for HIV prevention tailored to address the specific needs of young Latino sexual minority men.

Baruah added that they were appreciative to get to share their work at SSWR.

“Presenting at SSWR 2025 allowed me to highlight the importance of culturally tailored interventions in HIV prevention research with young Latino sexual minority men,” Baruah said. “I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to share my findings and contribute to advancing social work research.

 

“Employing Community Engaged Research Methods to Strengthen the Impact of Social Work Intervention Research”

UNC School of Social Work Associate Professor Amy Blank Wilson moderated a roundtable presentation at the 29th annual SSWR conference with UNC colleagues Trenette Clark Goings and Will Hall and the School’s 2023 Legacy Speakers Series keynote speaker Michelle Munson from New York University Silver School of Social Work.

The four scholars shared insights from their own work, bringing to life the roundtable’s theme of community-engaged research (CER).

Blank Wilson opened with her perspective that CER can boost the impact of social science interventions by grounding that research in the experiences of service users and people involved in the delivery of services.

She charted the broad continuum — from community-initiated and -run research projects to faculty identifying and partnering with a community to implement research, and other variations in between — available to social work scientists.

“We should take care that our approach to intervention research matches the goals of our stated work,” Blank Wilson said.

Clark Goings on community-engaged research

Clark Goings, the Sandra Reeves Spears and John B. Turner Distinguished Professor of Social Work, introduced practical examples from her own work about how a community-engaged approach can have a meaningful impact across all research stages, from development; to design and testing; to analysis; to dissemination.

Practical examples and strategies included:

  • Starting with a robust needs assessment. “Even if I am in my own hometown, I don’t assume I know all the problems,” Clark Goings said, noting that these early interactions and the ability to adjust prioritizations to meet pressing needs can help build strong community relationships earlier in the process.
  • Considering the use of advisory councils, including separate youth and adult advisory councils to hear from young people in a more uninhibited way. Advisors can help make data-gathering and dissemination efforts more effective. Clark Goings reminded researchers that compensating people for time served on councils was respectful and important and that council members were a powerful resource for understanding community needs and navigating community cultures and politics.
  • Community oversight committees were outlined as helpful to trial monitoring, distinct from the scientific team. “We use a design stage to help us co-create study and implementation protocol with a very broad range of stakeholders,” said Clark Goings, who elaborated that hearing from and collaborating with the community at this early stage can help avoid barriers to later implementation.
  • Moving from community consultants to team members. At the testing level, Clark Goings added that community members could be hired and professionally trained as intervention facilitators alongside clinical faculty. She noted that in the work she does, building community capacity with people who were already familiar with the research could support a research team’s data collection, research and implementation, while also providing employment opportunities within the community.
  • Bring intervention sessions to the community rather than asking to gather at a location convenient to the researchers. “We have held sessions in local libraries, nonprofit organizations, local LCSW conference rooms, and places of worship,” Clark Goings said. “This reduces transportation barriers, creates trust in a familiar environment, and in the end, we have found it results in more community engagement.”
  • Offering in-person, online and hybrid options to allow for more fulsome participation.
  • Involving community members in data interpretation. “I try to be humble, and stay positive rather than negative,” Clark Goings shared. “I can have a discussion section written, for example, and then ask someone else with fresh eyes to look it over while I sit with it.”
  • Dissemination: “We don’t publish findings just to have articles on shelves. We must get findings out to the community,” said Clark Goings, who advocated for having someone with graphic design skills on the research team to allow flyers, social media posts and other methods of information to be disseminated rapidly, broadly and in multiple languages where appropriate.

Hall on community-engaged research

Hall spoke to doctoral students and junior faculty members in attendance by bringing in examples from smaller-scale research projects. For example, he noted that reaching out for feedback and consultation from friends, students and colleagues in the queer community, or who worked with members of the community, helped provide valuable feedback as he developed an intervention manual in graduate school which adapted cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) strategies to reduce internalized homophobia/oppression/stigma in queer youth.

He gave other examples from later in his career, when he could budget for an intervention design team to look at feasibility data and help refine and modify that intervention manual.

His examples illustrated that over the course of a career, with different methods and strategies, one could incorporate community-involved research based upon connections to community and later use available resources and additional strategies to continue to strengthen research via community.

Munson on community-engaged research

Munson added an acronym — F.O.C.A.L. — which she uses to center herself at the onset of community-engaged research:

  • Flexibility
  • Openness
  • Collaboration
  • Acknowledge and discuss power imbalances
  • Lead with trust and respect

Munson also shared insights from a research project that originated with a community neighborhood council who reached out for help using data to better target existing evidence-based interventions with families.

“I found I could use my skills to help these community leaders better manifest their idea,” Munson said.

In conversation

A robust discussion period followed the presentations, allowing panelists and those in attendance to talk about relevant issues of note, such as deployment-focused intervention models of research; ways to address concerns around data sovereignty; strategies for building authentic, anti-oppressive relationships in CER; using an M-PI (multiple principal investigators) model; and the challenges of building community in a digital environment.

Blank Wilson shared powerful closing thoughts on community-engaged research, pointing out that amazing scientific work can fail when it sees community as simply a tool, instrument or impediment to success. In reference to her own insights from doing community-engaged work, she said, “When people tell you what they need, believe them.”

 

“Engaging in Anti-Oppressive Social Work Practice”

The negative mental health impacts of racism are well established, but many therapists lack training on how to approach race-related issues with their clients.

To better understand this gap, a team of UNC School of Social Work faculty and students conducted a study examining how psychotherapists engage with clients on topics related to race and racism, as well as how this has changed since the summer of 2020 when the death of George Floyd and subsequent demonstrations contributed to a significant increase in public awareness of these issues. They shared their findings at the 29th annual SSWR conference.

Clinical Associate Professor Deborah Barrett, Professor Michael Lambert, doctoral student Adam Englert, and MSW student Victor Ajayi shared the findings of this research project in their presentation “When and How Do Therapists Raise Issues of Race and Racism in Session.”

Lambert introduced the presentation by situating it in the context of existing research, which has identified significant gaps in current therapeutic practices relating to issues of race and racism.

Studies illustrating the extent of the problem revealed that anti-Black racism is often overlooked or even enacted, in the form of microaggressions, by white therapists. More promising findings, however, indicate that white therapists may be able to minimize racial differences experienced by their ethnic minority clients by demonstrating compassion, acceptance and comfort in discussing race-related issues.

Turning to the current study, Englert explained how the team designed their research to focus on the experiences and practices of therapists in relation to issues of race and racism, as well as how these have shifted in recent years. This involved recruiting psychotherapists of different races to participate in focus groups and follow-up with affinity groups in which they responded to open-ended questions about their relationships with clients of color, their approach to initiating conversations about race/racism with clients, and their methods for assessing and treating the effects of racism. Participants were also asked about how their therapeutic practices had changed, if at all, since June 2020.

The researchers then conducted thematic analysis using the responses to these questions. Ajayi discussed the themes identified, which included:

  • The influence of therapists’ racial identities on conversations about race with clients;
  • The impact of race on transference and countertransference;
  • The importance of holding a safe space for clients who wish to discuss race in sessions;
  • The need for best practices in responding to discrimination; and
  • The importance of recognizing and responding to racism as traumatic.

Barrett then shared the study’s key findings. Regarding when and how they raised issues related to race and racism in sessions, white therapists reported a tendency to wait for clients to broach the topic. Black therapists, on the other hand, shared more experiences discussing issues like race-related microaggressions with clients and noted that clients of color often expressed relief about working with a clinician of color because it required them to explain less about their experience of racism.

As for changes the therapists had experienced or implemented since June 2020, most white therapists reported paying increased attention to race in their practice. Though Black therapists generally didn’t report any related alterations to their practice, they did note an increase in the number of clients of color seeking their services, and some expressed feeling more comfortable being their authentic selves in sessions.

Regardless of racial background, participants in the study recognized the importance of treating racism as a form of trauma. However, while white therapists were largely eager for further education and resources to help them implement this approach, Black therapists tended to express skepticism about the ability of such tools — and the clinicians or agencies implementing them — to adequately address racial trauma.

These findings show that, despite some changes made in response to the events of 2020, psychotherapeutic practice still has significant room for improvement when it comes to race-related issues. In fact, the researchers noted that their study likely downplayed the extent of this shortcoming because it was conducted with clinicians who chose to participate in research on issues of race/racism, suggesting that they may be more interested and invested in the topic than therapists more broadly.

In discussing ways to address this significant gap in today’s therapeutic practice, the researchers emphasized the importance of increasing the racial diversity of the profession, which is currently dominated by white clinicians. They also advocated for providing additional training to white therapists on best practices for approaching and responding to issues of race and racism with clients.


2025 SSWR Conference Presentation Roundup

UNC School of Social Work faculty, staff and student researchers shared their work at the 29th Society for Social Work and Research annual conference.


Tar Heel pair selected as SSWR fellows

A pair of School of Social Work researchers were honored Jan. 18 for their achievements during the 2025 Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) 29th annual conference in Seattle, Wash.


School of Social Work dean named AASWSW fellow

UNC School of Social Work Dean Ramona Denby-Brinson was recognized as a member of the 2025 AASWSW’s fellows class.


Tar Heels gather, celebrate at 2025 SSWR reception

UNC School of Social Work faculty, staff, students and alumni gathered to celebrate the School’s research impact at SSWR.


Wilkerson calls to learn from the past, work for better future during SSWR presidential plenary

UNC School of Social Work Dean Ramona Denby-Brinson led the presidential plenary with award-winning author Isabel Wilkerson at the 29th SSWR annual conference.


Impact Report Winter 2025

The UNC School of Social Work’s latest Impact Report includes new stories from its children, youth, and family well-being and older adults and long-term care research programs.