Perspectives on the roles and value of social work practice in neighborhood health centers and implications for the reimbursement of services.

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the delivery of primary care services to underserved populations. This paper presents a subset of data from a larger exploratory study that examined how three professional groups (social workers, physicians, and administrators) in neighborhood health centers perceived the type and extent of psychosocial problems in their patient populations and the roles of their staff in addressing these problems. We examined the perceptions of physicians, administrators, and social workers as to who handles various psychosocial problems and whose responsibility it is to perform a range of psychosocial functions, with a focus on the function of social work.