Celebrating a Special Issue: Research on Social Work Practice Journal
A special issue of the Research on Social Work Practice Journal co-edited by CSSW Professors Nabila El-Bassel, the Willma and Albert Musher Professor of Social work and Dr. Louisa Gilbert was recently published, featuring contributions from 30 scientists affiliated with the Social Intervention Group (SIG) at the Columbia School of Social Work. This special issue features the latest HIV, intimate partner violence (IPV), gender-based violence (GBV), substance use, and addiction research.
The special issue highlights a diverse group of over 25 SIG researchers and affiliates working in a variety of disciplines, with 14 papers comprising the issue. Each describes different multi-level intervention studies including individual, couples, agency/community, and systems, as well as addressing core methodologies of intervention and implementation research. The primary source of funding for the studies reported in this special issue was the National Institute of Drug Abuse.
Under the leadership of Co-Founder and Director Dr. Nabila El-Bassel, SIG’s research prioritizes HIV/AIDS, substance use, gender-based violence, and co-occurring morbidities such as Hepatitis C, tuberculosis, mental illness, and trauma. This special issue contains the most recent reports on SIG’s intervention and prevention studies, on scientific processes and methods of designing culturally tailored interventions, and on the use of system-dynamic data-driven approaches to intervention research.
“We hope this special issue promotes the production of multidisciplinary intervention and implementation research that meet the needs of participants and communities that we serve and inspires other researchers to use the findings to inform future research,” Dr. El-Bassel remarked. Dr. El-Bassel is also the primary author of the paper “Couple-Based Behavioral HIV Interventions by the Social Intervention Group: Progress, Gaps, and Future Directions,” which is among those included in the special issue and is co-authored with Dr. Tim Hunt and Dr. Louisa Gilbert.
CSSW has a distinguished history of developing and implementing innovative intervention research, and is now one of the earliest professional schools in the world after 125 years of offering social work classes. SIG’s established research infrastructure within CSSW means the center has been able to work with multidisciplinary scholars from social work and other disciplines in pursuit of creating evidence-based practices and solutions, as well as working with impacted populations to address emerging social and public health concerns.
Motivated by a core mission of the Social Work profession to “enhance human well-being and help meet the basic human needs of all people and empower people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty,” the special issue commemorates the 30-year presence of SIG within CSSW and its guiding principles: “Global Science, Global Health, Global Equity.” SIG’s legacy, amidst countless accomplishments, includes producing the necessary research to create evidence-based solutions to social and public health problems in the U.S. and globally.
