Social work is an essential workforce integral to the United States' public health infrastructure and response to COVID-19. To understand stressors among frontline social workers during COVID-19, a cross-sectional study of U.S-based social workers (N = 1,407) in health settings was collected (in June through August 2020).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSocial workers have engaged in promotive, preventive, and intervention work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that social workers are disproportionately women, and the essential nature of practice during the pandemic, how social workers experience caretaking and financial stressors warrants examination. Data are drawn from a larger cross-sectional survey of U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSocial work has been a part of the essential workforce historically and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, yet lack recognition. This work explores the experiences and invisibility of social workers within the pandemic response. Data are drawn from a large cross-sectional survey of US-based social worker from June to August of 2020.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile social workers have served as frontline workers responding to the needs of vulnerable populations during COVID-19 pandemic, little is known about how social work professionals themselves have been impacted. This article explored the impact of COVID-19 on social work professionals' mental health, physical health, and access to personal protective equipment (PPE). This was a cross-sectional web-based survey of social workers practicing in the United States (N = 3,118); data on demographic and workplace characteristics, physical and mental health, and safety concerns were collected between June and August of 2020.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSince the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) first emerged in December 2019, there have been unprecedented efforts worldwide to contain and mitigate the rapid spread of the virus through evidence-based public health measures. As a component of pandemic response in the United States, efforts to develop, launch, and scale-up contact tracing initiatives are rapidly expanding, yet the presence of social work is noticeably absent. In this paper, we identify the specialized skill set necessary for high quality contact tracing in the COVID-19 era and explore its alignment with social work competencies and skills.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProgress in refining the definition and basic concepts of public health social work (PHSW) is central to its revitalization. Advancing PHSW further depends on understanding the roles, domains, and daily activities of current PHSW practitioners in the contemporary workforce. The goal of the is to explore how public health social workers conceptualize and locate their work.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduced in 2013 by the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, the Grand Challenges for Social Work (GCSW) implicitly embrace a public health perspective. However, the lack of a specific overarching conceptual framework creates a challenge for moving the GCSW from concept to practice. In this article, authors propose that public health social work (PHSW) provides a unifying framework for moving the GCSW from concept to practice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSocial work education plays a critical role in preparing social workers to lead efforts that improve health. Because of the dynamic health care landscape, schools of social work must educate students to facilitate health care system improvements, enhance population health, and reduce medical costs. We reviewed the existing contributions of social work education and provided recommendations for improving the education of social workers in 6 key areas: aging, behavioral health, community health, global health, health reform, and health policy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To establish a baseline of health content in 4 domains of US social work education-baccalaureate, master's, doctoral, and continuing education programs-and to introduce the Social Work Health Impact Model, illustrating social work's multifaceted health services, from clinical to wide-lens population health approaches.
Methods: We analyzed US social work programs' Web site content to determine amount and types of health content in mission statements, courses, and specializations. Coding criterion determined if content was (1) health or health-related (HHR) and (2) had wide-lens health (WLH) emphasis.
Social work is a core health profession with origins deeply connected to the development of contemporary public health in the United States. Today, many of the nation's 600 000 social workers practice broadly in public health and in other health settings, drawing on a century of experience in combining clinical, intermediate, and population approaches for greater health impact. Yet, the historic significance of this long-standing interdisciplinary collaboration-and its current implications-remains underexplored in the present era.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDramatic changes in the health system due to national health reform are raising important questions regarding the educational preparation of social workers for the new health arena. While dual-degree programs in public health and social work can be an important response to what is needed educationally, little is known about them. The National MSW/MPH Programs Study surveyed MSW/MPH program administrators to better understand the prevalence, models, structure, and challenges of these dual-degree programs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study assesses the potential of social work-facilitated patient navigation to help mothers with depression engage with mental health care. We conducted a randomized pilot trial (N = 47) in Head Start-a U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn light of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's goals of better patient care, cost control, and improved population outcomes, prevention has emerged as an important component of health reform. Social work, with its extensive involvement in the health system and deep roots in public health, can benefit from a better understanding of its role in prevention. This study builds on the Social Work Interest in Prevention Study (SWIPS), which evaluated extent, type, and levels of prevention content in nine social work journals from 2000 to 2005.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEvery day in the United States, over halfa million social workers provide services to people with health, mental health, and substance abuse problems in a fragmented system that emphasizes disease treatment over prevention. Powerful issues--including health inequities, population aging, globalization, natural disaster, war, and economic downturn--make the need for preventive approaches more critical than ever. Despite social work's historic commitment to enhancing human well-being and public health involvement, little is known about how social work currently views prevention or whether it is being addressed in the social work professional literature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: The emergence of new, complex social health concerns demands that the public health field strengthen its capacity to respond. Academic institutions are vital to improving the public health infrastructure. Collaborative and transdisciplinary practice competencies are increasingly viewed as key components of public health training.
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