Research with Purpose

Social work research at our school is driven by purpose. Explore this compilation of recent peer-reviewed journal articles our faculty & staff are most proud to have published.

Fall/Winter 2025

Margaret Lombe, Associate Professor and Bridge Program Co-Director

• Exploring associations between neighborhood amenities and mental health: Insights from parent reports of older youth in low-income households
• Family history of diabetes: Neighborhood and familial risks in African American youth living in public housing

Mary Collins, Professor and Chair of Human Behavior, Research & Policy

• Post‐secondary educational aspirations among young adults with foster care experience: A focus on vocational education.
• Another side of waiver federalism: Lessons from federal workforce policy

Barbara Jones, Dean and Professor

• Digital divide in social media use among cancer survivors and the moderation role of offline social support
• The Current State of Palliative Care Research for Adolescents and Young Adults With Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Thematic Analysis of Empirical Literature

Deborah Chassler, Senior Academic Researcher

• Tailored strategies to reduce opioid overdose deaths for pregnant and postpartum women: Examples and lessons learned from the HEALing Communities Study
• The Process and Cost of Developing a Community Advisory Board Focused on Opioid Overdose Deaths

Luis Alvarez-Hernandez, Assistant Professor

• Transforming through switch points: Latinx nonbinary individuals’ experiences of moving from internalized cisnormativity to liberated consciousness
• “Si te la pones, yo también me la pongo”: COVID vaccines and Hispanic communities at the Texas-Mexico border region

Astraea Augsberger, Associate Professor & Associate Dean for Doctoral Education

• Project IMPACT: Achieving Family Stability for Parents With Intellectual Disabilities
• Bridging success: How institutional adults can support system involved youth and young adults in pursuing post-secondary vocational education and career pathways

Hyeouk Chris Hahm, Professor and Associate Dean for Research Professor

• National Trends of Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors Among Asian American Young Adults Between 2008 and 2019: The Intersection of Sex and Sexual Identity
• Fluctuating recovery: Trajectories of young adult mental health through the COVID-19 pandemic 2020-2022

Jennifer M. Gómez, Associate Professor

• Effect of White Supremacy on White Young People’s Blame Attributions in a Male-Perpetrated Acquaintance Rape Vignette
• Examining the generational intersection of interpersonal, cultural, and institutional betrayal in Flint, Michigan

Elizabeth Klein, Director of Student Services for Online Programs

• “I Feel Like there’sa Politician in the Room”: Provider Perceptions of the Impacts of State Abortion Bans on Physician–Patient Relationships
• Stressors and coping strategies among people affected by Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in West Africa: A qualitative study across multiple levels of the social ecology

Lindsay Rosenfeld, Research Scientist

• Coherence of stroke survivors’ lived experiences and the stroke-specific quality of life scale
• Insights from multidisciplinary rare disease visits: Findings from wrap-up documents and participant surveys in a national diagnostic study

Moaven Razavi, Senior Research Scientist

• Formulation and validation of a regional household wealth index for sub-Saharan Africa

William Crown, Distinguished Research Scientist

• A hybrid simulation model of HIV program interventions: From transmission behavior to macroeconomic impacts
• Research method, conduct, and reporting considerations for improving the quality of non-hypothesis-evaluating treatment effectiveness analyses using real-world data: An ISPOR Special Interest Group report

Allyala Nandakumar, Research Professor

• Supporting local ownership of transition processes: A key pathway to sustaining the HIV response
• US isolationism, HIV, and primary care integration: The inflection point for low-income and middle-income countries is now

Yoonsook Ha, Associate Professor

• Advancing research on equitable access to early care and education in the United States
• They need nurturance; they need to be seen: Early care and education for children exposed to intimate partner violence

Clemens Noelke, Research Associate Professor

• Temporal Trends in the Childhood Opportunity Index at Children’s Hospitals

Clemens Noelke, Research Associate Professor; Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, Professor and Director of IECOHD; Robert Ressler, Research Scientist

• Death by neighborhood: Preliminary results on disparities in violent deaths by neighborhood opportunity with the Child Opportunity Index 3.0

Robert Ressler, Research Scientist

• Using the Child Opportunity Index to examine equity in access to a state-funded prekindergarten program

Monica Jordan, Senior Project Manager

• Mapping care pathways: Clinical providers’ perspectives on process maps of HIV service delivery in Uganda

Allyson Baughman, Project Director, CISWH

• Staying afloat: How families raising children with disabilities used the expanded Child Tax Credit

Darien Alexander Williams, Assistant Professor

• Planning from the Black Counterpublic
• The importance of belonging: Reflections on a participatory action research project in Jacksonville, Florida

Arden O’Donnell, Postdoctoral Associate

• Development of a Mindfulness and Self-compassion (MASC) Stress Reduction Program for Caregivers of Persons With Dementia With Behavioral Symptoms
• Extending the Reach: Ambulatory Specialty Palliative Care for People With Heart Failure

Peter Treitler, Assistant Professor

• Treatment initiation and outcomes associated with receipt of emergency department-based peer support following opioid overdose
• States with substantial increases in buprenorphine uptake did so with increased Medicaid prescribing, 2018–24

Daniel Jacobson Lopez, Assistant Professor and Deputy Title IX Coordinator

• “Cuz They Straight and Everything”: Barriers to Reporting Sexual Assault Among Gay Latino Male Sexual Assault Survivors
• Dreams Interrupted: Unraveling Predictors and Correlates of Insomnia Symptoms and Sleep Distress Among Ghanian Men Who Have Sex With Men (MSM) Living with HIV

Ruth Paris, Professor

• Trauma and mental health: Examining psychosocial changes for Latin American immigrant mothers and young children participating in Child-Parent Psychotherapy

Bethlyn Vergo Houlihan, Project Director, CISWH

• What Families of Children With Medical Complexity Say About Their Family Well-Being

Hope Haslam Straughan, Clinical Associate Professor 

• Sustainable social work practice through ritual. Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought, 44(3), 251–263
• Parental Understanding of Cultural Difference: A Study of Transracially Adopting Couples. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 106(3), 613-626

Jordana Muroff, Professor and Chair of Clinical Practice

• Classification of indoor clutter from images: Application to hoarding assessment

Dawn Belkin Martinez, Clinical Professor and Associate Dean, Equity & Inclusion

• Storytelling for social change: Using emerging technology to develop antioppressive social work training and practice

Learn More

Visit the Faculty & Research webpages on the BUSSW website to browse by faculty, areas of expertise, projects and grants, or check out our recent Research News.