PhD Student Lands ARDRAW Grant for Research

Thursday, November 8, 2018

Kelsi Carolan, LICSW, a fourth-year doctoral candidate at BUSSW, received a grant from the Social Security Administration’s ARDRAW Small Grant Program for her doctoral research, “Factors Promoting and Inhibiting Work in the Context of Chronic Neurological Disease: Uncovering Pathways to Intervention.” Linda Sprague Martinez, assistant professor at BUSSW, is acting as Carolan’s ARDRAW project mentor.

Formerly a medical social worker, Carolan describes her focus as “understanding the effects of living with chronic medical illness and generating strategies for improving quality of life through qualitative, mixed methods and/or intervention research.” She is especially interested in how social determinants of health affect medical and psychosocial outcomes in the context of chronic health conditions.

Before entering BUSSW’s doctoral program in September 2015, Carolan was a clinical social worker at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a Harvard Medical School Teaching Hospital, where she was selected for a Post-Masters social work fellowship in Cognitive Neurology.

In addition to the ARDRAW grant, Carolan works on behalf of two Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) grants.

Interested in learning more about our doctoral students’ research? Visit the “Meet Our PhD Students” webpage.