Wahiba Abu-Ras, PhD
I will allocate the research release to address: “Orphan Children: The Invisible COVID-19 Pandemic in Jordan.” The study has three main objectives: 1) to assess the impact of COVID-19 on Iraqi and Syrian orphan children living in Jordan; 2) to examine the impact of the financial crisis on the provision of services to Syrian and Iraqi orphans; and 3) to determine how the nongovernmental organizations’ (NGOs’) crisis and COVID-19 affect the social, economic, health and educational well-being of the orphans. The study will employ qualitative methods, including 10 interviews with key leaders and providers from NGOs that work with Iraqi and Syrian orphans. Another 16–20 interviews will be conducted with Iraqi and Syrian orphan parents (eight from each group). All interviews will be conducted in Arabic using Jordan as the host country for both populations. The results of this study will enhance the efforts of the Adelphi University School of Social Work to promote global social work knowledge, combat discrimination against vulnerable populations and develop courses that address global social work issues. It will also help prepare and recruit international social workers to work for NGOs such as the United Nations, Save the Children, UNICEF, the World Health Organization and Women for Women International, which may lead to long-term careers.
Carol Cohen, DSW
The Scope and Dimensions of Fulbright Projects in Social Work
The purpose of this study is to understand the dimensions and diversity of international collaborations among social work awards in Fulbright Commission programs. The research includes collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data related to the scope, activities and reflections of Fulbright Scholars in social work over the past 25 years. Results of this study will be published and disseminated widely to inform, expand and enhance the impact of Fulbright projects involving social work scholars, educators, students and leaders in the United States and internationally.
Beth Counselman-Carpenter, PhD ’14
This research release allows for a meta-analysis of different self-care models to be explored, an analysis for how liberatory self-care can be more deeply integrated into generalist and clinical curriculum throughout the School of Social Work, the creation of a self-care training/webinar/program for behavioral health providers, and dissemination of findings in peer-reviewed social work education and practice journals. It explores the constructs of holistic social justice, radical self-care, self-care as liberation, exquisite empathy and the decolonizing capitalist practices in the current wellness movement, to name a few terms. This will be followed by conducting a meta-analysis of research projects and published works related to other self-care studies in medicine, public health, nursing and social work. Finally, an analysis of how liberatory self-care trainings for our field instructors, advisers and faculty could be integrated in a more holistic manner through all aspects of our programs to more positively impact our students, with a goal of improved satisfaction and retention of students with socially marginalized identities.
Richard Francoeur, PhD
Dr. Francoeur will extend a novel modeling approach that he developed to reveal multimorbidity (two or more co-occurring disease conditions that contribute to negative outcomes) and published in Mathematics during his recent sabbatical. In targeted subgroups of older adults with diabetes, he will distinguish symptoms of depression that have synergistic influences on lifestyle factors, disease progression or other illness conditions (i.e., symptom interactions) from symptoms of depression that simply co-occur with them (i.e., symptom clusters). The lifestyle factors include smoking, drinking and excess weight; disease progression involves diabetes complications (neuropathy, retinopathy); and other illness conditions include history of hypertension, heart attack, heart failure, silent cerebrovascular disease related to atherosclerosis, and cancer. Beyond symptoms of depression, Dr. Francoeur may test indicators of problems in cognition, sleep or instrumental activities of daily living. Findings may yield insights for screening, treatment and future research in this area.
Subadra Panchanadeswaran, PhD
Dr. Panchanadeswaran is on sabbatical in the Spring 2022 semester. During this period, she is studying the experiences of help-seeking of immigrant South Asian women in the United States who have experienced intimate partner violence. Specifically, she is examining the responses that survivors receive from both South Asian as well as mainstream organizations. Additionally, she is documenting the perspectives of service providers who work with immigrant populations regarding the challenges of providing services for this hidden and vulnerable population. For this project, she is collaborating with Manisha Joshi, PhD, from the University of South Florida.
Sara Terrana, PhD
The topic of my research release (Spring 2023) is to spend time writing and analyzing the data collected in Spring 2022 from social action initiatives, tentatively titled “Teaching Social Work Students About Environmental Justice Through Innovative Social Action Initiatives.” A signature pedagogy of social work, learning by doing, is the centerpiece to the curriculum, as 490 students worked in 63 small groups to complete various social action projects related to the overarching theme of environmental justice. There are many unknowns regarding this year’s theme. Thus, we created a survey for a pre/posttest response format first to understand students’ baseline knowledge of environmental justice and their confidence and commitment levels to environmental justice advocacy behaviors and actions. We received a 54 percent pre-survey rate (n = 265). We hope for a favorable post-survey response rate through incentives of 25 $25 Amazon gift cards. We will then compare it after the ‘intervention’ of the group work to see if any statistically significant changes occurred. There are a series of papers that will result from this data sent.