Increasing Public Impact

The winter 2019 issue of the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research includes a special section on Public Impact Scholarship in Social Work guest edited by Assistant Professor Shannon Sliva and Associate Professor Jennifer Greenfield. Professor Jeff Jenson is the journal’s editor-in-chief. The section explores critical issues in public impact scholarship and provides examples of measurable efforts to influence public policy, practice and behavior through the dissemination of social work research.

An article by Sliva, Greenfield, Professor Kimberly Bender and Associate Professor Stacey Freedenthal introduces the section, providing a brief history of prior efforts to understand and critique the impact of academic scholarship on the public and articulating a framework for conceptualizing public impact scholarship.

The section also includes an article by GSSW Dean Amanda Moore McBride and fellow social work deans and directors Laura S. Abrams (University of California, Los Angeles), Alan Dettlaff (University of Houston), Tom Gregoire (The Ohio State University), David Jenkins (University of Louisville) and Edwina Uehara (University of Washington). They describe promising approaches for social work leaders committed to supporting and promoting public impact scholarship in social work schools and programs.

“Each contribution offers insights and inquiries central to how social work can meet the growing public need for rigorous, accessible scientific knowledge,” Sliva and co-authors write in the introduction. “Threaded throughout is an invitation to our social work colleagues to further the conversation, as well as the work.”

GSSW faculty will present several related special sessions on research priorities and capacity building at the SSWR Annual Conference Jan. 15–19, 2020, in Washington, D.C. Greenfield and Sliva will present “Disseminating Research to Influence Policy and Practice: A Skills-Based Workshop on Public Impact Scholarship for Social Work,” and McBride will join her co-authors to present “Advancing the Public Impact of Social Work Scholarship: Promising Approaches for Supporting Faculty.” Bender and colleagues from the University of Michigan and Georgia State University will present “Becoming a Brief and Brilliant Speaker: Communicating Your Work for Impact with a Public Audience.”