School of Social Work News

Research Fellow Greer Hamilton, PhD ’23, has been selected as an Agent of Change Fellow. Sponsored by the Environmental Health News and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, the program is designed to empower emerging leaders from historically excluded backgrounds in science and academia to reimagine solutions for a just and healthy planet.

Associate Professor Shanna Kattari spoke with USA Today about polyamory, the changing attitudes towards monogamy and increased interest in different relationship styles. "The more that even monogamous people are willing to learn and educate themselves about polyamory, the better it is for everyone," said Kattari.

The School of Social Work student group Black Radical Healing Pathways (BRHP) received a 2024 Central Campus MLK Spirit Award. MSW students Kareem Isaac, Rhianna Womack, Ataia Templeton and Kyra Smith accepted the award on behalf of BRHP; they would also like to credit alumni Joseph “Jojo” Pearson-Green, MSW ’23, and Syncere Ellis, MSW ’23, who were on the leadership team last semester.

BRHP aspires to organize, educate, mobilize and empower Black students to work for transformative changes on campus, neighborhood and communities. Their focus is to nourish and cultivate the fighting spirits, critical consciousness and aesthetics of Black students.

The Central Campus Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Spirit Award program honors undergraduates, graduate students, and student groups on Central Campus who best exemplify the leadership and extraordinary vision of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Associate Professor Shanna Katari spoke with NPR’s Marketplace about job discrimination and the role it plays in the higher rates of economic hardship that transgendered people face in the U.S. “So it might not be something as explicit as ‘I’m not hiring you because you’re trans,’ but ‘I’m not hiring you because you don’t match my idea of what a woman should look like,’” they said.

Associate Clinical Professor Daicia Price spoke with Gray TV’s Local News Live about social media and loneliness. “Social Media has a role in our society,” she said, “but it is not a replacement for those intimate connections that people probably were really desiring.”

Associate Professor Shanna Kattari was interviewed on PBS NewsHour Weekend in a segment on the challenges of love and dating while living with disabilities.

“I think nondisabled people really buy into a lot of the notions that have been perpetuated around disability and disabled people, such as disabled folks are all asexual, which is not true,” said Kattari. “There is this idea that we should feel grateful to be asked on a date or grateful to be partnered with, which is totally not the case.”

PhD student So’Phelia Morrow describes in a New York Amsterdam News editorial how seeing a squirrel chasing a butterfly sparked hope and inspired her to leave an abusive partner.

“The moment lasted only a second, but it was long enough for me to receive the message,” she wrote. “Although I never thought much about butterflies before, at that moment, I saw it as hope. I laughed to myself. Hope was flying in front of me. Change was going to come.”

MSW students Wolfgang Bahr, Sarah Shimizu and L Tantay have all had projects selected for the Michigan Health Equity Challenge, which provides support for U-M grad students working with community-based organizations in developing multidisciplinary initiatives that address health care inequities.

Bahr and MPH student Irving Suarez are developing a program for Latin American immigrants to address heart disease through stress management and community health leadership initiatives.

Shimizu and Tantay’s project focuses on improving LGBTQIA+ communities through capacity building training and direct mental health funding for LGBTQA+ Detroiters of color.