Panel Discusses Global Perspectives on Social Work

A panel of students and faculty from different parts of the world recently led a discussion at the School of Social Work centered on the increasingly global nature of social work issues. The December 6 program, which was organized by first-year Indiscisplinary Doctoral Program student Svetlana Smashnaya, was accompanied by eclectic music and international foods and beverages.

Alvin Lee, a first-year PhD student who is Burmese and Chinese, gave the first presentation about the complexity of providing mental health services to clients from different parts of the world. He noted that, in the relationship between client and clinician, both individuals bring their own version of cultural understanding to the session. Emphasizing that social workers should work to bridge the gap between the local culture of the therapist and the global culture of the client, he explained that developing cultural competency is even more important today in the context of mental health. By focusing on the human connections involved in the client-therapist dyad, social workers can use the cultural intersection in the therapeutic setting as a starting point for conversations and for developing ways to address the presenting issues.

BUSSW Professor Luz Lopez followed with a presentation on her native Puerto Rican culture and the research she has been conducting under the “La Voz” grant on HIV and drug use.(The La Voz HIV Prevention Effort study is being conducted with Tapestry Health Services in Springfield, Massachusetts and is funded by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Grant # TI14430. BUSSW Professor Lena Lundgren is Principal Investigator.

Professor Lopez and research assistants Lisa Zerden and Melissa Sparks, both BUSSW students, performed outreach and interviews using a participatory approach with HIV drug abusing clients. In this research, Professor Lopez found that there were important differences between the infection rates of the Puerto Rican cohort and those in the La Voz study. This finding suggests that the traditional HIV prevention methods used in Puerto Rico are not as effective and that it is important to develop improved efforts that address the cultural and social needs of the clients.

For more information on this program, please contact Svetlana Smashnaya at s-smashnaya@rambler.ru

(This article was written by Lisa McCoy Cremer, SSW ’08.)