While global learning among undergraduate students of color has slightly increased over the past decade, there are major research gaps regarding students of color attending historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), more specifically, the number of undergraduate students of color majoring in social work. The primary goal of this article is to discuss barriers that may prevent students of color who attend HBCUs from participating in global learning experiences. Also, provided in this article is a discussion regarding a Global Learning Visits Program within an undergrduate social work program at Bowie State University, an HBCU, which can serve as a model to assist students with addressing and overcoming barriers in order to take advantage of study abroad learning opportunities.

To address the challenges present in urban communities and develop social work leaders who are equipped to confront a myriad of social and economic justice issues, Coppin State University established the Dr. Dorothy I. Height Center for the Advancement of Social Justice (DHC). Housed in the Department of Social Work, the DHC is a community-based resource whose mission is to heighten awareness regarding national and international human rights and social justice issues that impact marginalized communities. The DHC utilizes social work interns who focus on community engagement as operationalized via social justice–related advocacy, research and education initiatives. This article will highlight the experiences of these student interns and the impact of the internship on their development in the areas of social justice and leadership.

Substance use disorders continue to have adverse consequences for a significant number of individuals and families. Despite the increasing need for behavioral health clinical social work practitioners trained to effectively work with this population, social work programs continue to lag behind in providing courses, which will adequately address this need. According to the Council of Social Work Education, approximately 4.7% of accredited social work programs had one or more required course offerings related to addressing substance use disorders. The purpose of this article is to address the identified gap by describing the development of a content-specific curriculum related to addressing substance use disorders while also providing a working framework for other Master of Social Work programs to consider.

Recent high-profile killings of unarmed Black males underscore a stark reality in America: though Black men have the same constitutional rights as all other citizens of the United States, in practice their rights are often violated. The negative stereotype that all Black males are criminals has created an environment that perpetuates the killing of unarmed Black males by police officers as justifiable self-defense. In this article, critical race theory (CRT) provides a theoretical lens to examine and understand the persistent racism underlying the social inequities that have been thrust upon Black males in the United States of America. The authors conclude with implications and recommendations for social work education.

Using classroom vignettes, this article portrays the experiences of four White social work educators with minority-view inclusion and conflict management that is a result of divergent perspectives in the classroom. The use of reflexivity is explored as a strategy for understanding educators' biases and assumptions in teaching. In addition, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics is applied as it refers to helping social work students learn to think critically to meet the needs and rights of clients and to address social inequalities, diversity, privilege, and oppression. The authors provide recommendations based on their experiences and reflections.

The purpose of this article is to present an application of two tools the ecomap (Hartman, 1995) and cultural ecogram (Yasui, 2015) used sequentially so that it may help in the process of assisting health professionals in determining ways to improve culturally informed, instead of culturally competent healthcare provision. Both tools have been developed in the context of clinical delivery of social services, have some known research that points to the benefits of their use in health and mental healthcare (Lloyd, 2005), but have not yet been applied to promoting the cultural sensitivity with awareness in healthcare management of diabetes type 2 with urban African American grandparents who are caretakers of children.

Incorporating residents’ voices in needs assessments and decision-making activities affecting public housing initiatives is supported by various research. This approach of increasing communal empowerment and growth informed a needs and assets assessment to support an urban community center servicing ethnically and culturally diverse public housing residents. This study employed qualitative methods to gather insights from focus group participants about their perceived needs of the community. The data gathered from the focus groups provided an opportunity for community voices to expand on understanding the assets and needs of the community. The five themes that emerged in the focus group discussion were: (1) Yearning for home and community; (2) Appreciation for diversity; (3) Conditions supporting human dignity; (4) Continual growth of programs & affordability; and (5) Emphasis on trust. These insights support the importance of including community voice for future programming, policies, and research.

The establishment of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) dates back over 150 years, during a period in history when White institutions denied African Americans access to education. HBCUs made the education of Black people their primary mission, which affected the lives of millions of people around the world (Hopps, 2007; Williams & Ashley, 2004). Subsequently, HBCUs' establishment in and of itself incorporates the fundamental and foundational social work core values established by the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). Historically, the training of social workers at HBCUs embodies NASW core values: integrity, dignity, worth of an individual, and social justice.

Background: The role that fathers play in the lives of their families, particularly, the lives of children, is vitally important. Research has found positive associations between father involvement and factors, such as infant cognitive outcomes, children’s school-readiness where levels of mothers’ supportiveness are low, better socioemotional, and academic functioning in children. Black males, many who are fathers, are disproportionately overrepresented within the criminal justice system. High incarceration rates have significant economic and social impacts on families and communities. Objective: This article examines differences in father involvement among Black fathers with criminal records and explores relationships between fathers’ involvement, the amount of time served in jail, fathers’ employment status, and fathers’ education levels. Method: Secondary analysis of the third wave of Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing (FFCW) public-use dataset was used for this article. The FFCW study follows a panel or cohort of 4,700 children born to unwed (3,600) and married (1,100) parents. The Fragile Families study employed a stratified random sample of 75 hospitals across 20 U.S. cities with populations over 200,000. Findings: The results of the analyses found (a) that the time served in jail had no effect on fathers’ involvement, (b) no statistically significant differences in fathers’ involvement based on fathers’ education level, and (c) fathers who were working were more engaged in the lives of their children, as compared to fathers who were not working and under correctional supervision. Conclusion: This article’s exploration of differences and relationships between father involvement and socioeconomic variables among Black fathers with criminal records further demystifies the complexities of fragile family compositions and circumstances while informing future policy, practices, and research.

Hispanic-serving institutions' (HSIs') settings for social work programs present a unique challenge as a context for implementing social work programs due to their unique mandate to serve Hispanic students. Moreover, this context invites innovative and “out of the box” programmatic ideals that address social justice values. This article presents an example of the implementation of critical race theory to frame a social work program at a medium-sized university in Southern California. Testimonios, a LatCrit empirical method, is used in this article to tell the story from the perspective of two of the founding faculty.

The health trajectory of Black immigrants receives little attention in minority health discourse despite Black immigrants representing a notable share of the Black population. One aspect of their health that requires increased attention is the immigrant health paradox. This draws attention to the deteriorating outcomes of immigrants as they assimilate into the host country. Although a few scholars have acknowledged the role of race in this trajectory, few have examined it from a critical perspective. This article embraces critical race theory to argue that racial processes intersect with other forms of structural oppression to produce the immigrant health paradox. An understanding of this health trajectory of Black immigrants is instructive in understanding the impact of race on minority health.

The present study seeks to explore the correlations of depressive symptoms among African American youth. The sample included 118 African American preadolescents (age range: 9–12, M = 10.54; SD = 1.02) living in an urban environment. The sample was primarily female (64.4%, n = 76) and in the 4th grade (43.2%, n = 51). Depressive symptoms were negatively associated with spiritual well-being, self-esteem and positively associated with exposure to violence and bullying. This study identified correlations as well as predictors of depressive symptoms. The predictors include spiritual well-being, bullying, exposure to violence, and self-esteem. These findings documented individual and social level psychosocial factors as an important determinant of depressive symptoms. Furthermore, these findings provided needed empirical evidence documenting factors that affect depressive symptoms among African American children.

This sequential, mixed methods study assessed economic growth and transportation infrastructure development in a suburban Texas boomtown, where population growth exceeded 100% over a 20-year-period. Researchers applied empowerment theory to investigate and compare how environmental justice (EJ) and non-EJ residents perceive the growth. Results from 200 surveys and four focus groups were analyzed and paired with GIS mapping. Findings confirmed incongruence between transportation infrastructure development and economic growth, suggesting a lack of intentional planning, with the consequence of reinforcing societal inequities. Findings underscore need for innovative and inclusive urban planning in the context of rapid growth.

The integration of peer mentors with a history of incarceration is a strengths-based intervention, primarily emerging within large urban U.S. cities. The Credible Messenger Institute is an innovative training program that aims to prepare adults who were formerly incarcerated to mentor justice-involved youth. Through two focus groups, this study explored the change experiences of 11 peer mentors who participated in the 6-week training. Data analysis revealed five themes and one subtheme that identified the change outcomes and the conditions and relationships that supported internal change. Findings suggest that relationships and specific conditions were critical factors in supporting the peer mentor's identity change process. Implications and recommendations for practice and future research on peer mentor interventions with justice-involved populations are provided.

Social work students need to learn how to synthesize sociopolitical and psychological theories into an integrative practice approach if they are to become effective agents of social change and social justice. Academic resources used to scaffold these skills oftentimes implicitly presume that the social worker is white and the client is “other”—Hispanic, African American, and so forth. The integrated sociopolitical and psychological analysis model, ISPA, presented and applied herein to the analysis of societal racism, provides an integrative framework for the teaching and practice of social work and social justice. The model promotes the decolonization of social work educational spaces, while providing Hispanic and African American social work students with an integrated framework that decenters “whiteness” and examines its individual and societal effects.

Transition milestones (e.g., telling family members that one is transgender and beginning hormone treatments) are specific transition-related events in transgender persons’ lives that demarcate what their life circumstances were before versus after the milestone was reached. This article examines the relationship between transition milestones and psychological distress in a large sample of transgender adults. Data from the 2015 U.S. National Transgender Survey were used to examine 11 specific transition milestones in a sample of 27,715 transgender Americans aged 18 or older. A majority (64.6%) of respondents reported that psychological distress had affected them “some” or “a lot.” Along with nine of the demographic measures and 13 of the support/discrimination measures, nine of the 11 transition milestones under study were found to be related to psychological distress levels. Reaching specific transition milestones plays an important role in many transgender adults’ lives and may be highly beneficial in helping them to reduce psychological distress.

The American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare established 12 social work grand challenges to address critical social problems in America. Some of these social problems include health disparities, income inequality, and the lack of social justice, among others. These social problems are deep and daunting especially for people of color. Tackling these challenges would require a focus on the racial attitudes in society, such as color-blind racial attitudes, that maintain the power structure that fuels inequality. This article introduces color-blind racial attitudes and discusses their impact on social work practice and policy. Lastly, it presents strategies for addressing color-blind racial attitudes related to the grand challenges.

In Hong Kong, the development of social enterprises has been rapid and is becoming increasingly diversified. Among the various types of social enterprise that exist, a work integration social enterprise (WISE) helps relieve different kinds of social problems such as unemployment. The success of a WISE is reliant on sustainable operations and developments led by competent managers. In this study, managers of 19 selected WISEs were interviewed to determine the core management competencies required in WISE operations. Five domains, strategic, business, leadership, interpersonal, and intrapersonal competency, were delineated. These competencies were also interrelated and complementary. The findings provide a valuable reference for related training and further development of WISEs.

The purpose of this study was to investigate help-seeking behaviors among 228 self-identified culturally Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals living in Washington, DC, and the surrounding metropolitan area. Results indicate that the vast majority of participants reported feeling stressed, worried, or anxious. A large proportion of the sample reported feeling sad, unhappy, or depressed and experiencing discrimination because of being deaf. Despite these reports, more than three quarters of the sample reported that they were unlikely to seek help if they experienced a serious personal or emotional problem. Race and physical abuse were significant predictors of seeking help. Culturally sensitive interventions can contribute positively to Deaf individuals seeking help.

Teen dating violence (TDV) is increasingly recognized as a national health priority, impacting overall well-being and school success. However, there are overlooked barriers to TDV program delivery in schools and youth-serving organizations and these are ideal settings to reach youth universally. In this study, we conducted 10 focus groups with school (e.g., administrators, social workers, nurses) and after-school personnel regarding barriers to TDV programming within a large urban community serving predominantly Mexican-heritage youth. Findings offer practice-driven considerations for the implementation of programs within urban communities. These include attention to limited resources, inhibitive and non-existent policies, competing demands, a lack of training, and demand for culturally competent curricula and wrap-around services.

The community of Huntington, an Appalachian city in West Virginia with the highest overdose rate in the nation, participated as an Innovation Community in a grant funded Community Assessment and Education to Promote Behavioral Health Planning and Evaluation (CAPE II) project. Activities entailed designing and implementing an innovative, replicable, and sustainable early warning protocol that addressed a locally determined set of community behavioral health issues. Using 192 publicly available indicators tracked for a year throughout 12 geographic neighborhoods, the authors developed an early warning system and analyzed relationships between key indicators and substance overdose and arrests. Community interventions were designed to address these relationships from the perspective of social workers, law enforcement officers, and community members.