Faculty - Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis

Panel examines migration policy, vulnerability and survivor support

Fri, 08 May 2026 18:22:53 +0000

The Clark-Fox Policy Institute, Forced Migration Initiative and the Brown School Global Programs Office recently convened researchers and frontline practitioners working across the United States and internationally for “Borders, Vulnerability, and Protection: Rethinking Trafficking and Migration Policy,” a panel exploring the lived realities of migrants and trafficking survivors and the policy environments that influence their experiences. Hosted as part of the Clark-Fox Policy Institute’s Senior Policy Fellows initiative, the event reflected the institute’s commitment to connecting research, lived experience and policy to advance more effective and evidence-informed solutions for children, families and communities. The panel was led by Brown School faculty member and CFPI Senior Policy Fellow Mitra Naseh, assistant professor and founding director of the Forced Migration Initiative, and included social work scholar and researcher...

The post Panel examines migration policy, vulnerability and survivor support first appeared on Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Halvorsen named co-director of Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging

admin — Mon, 04 May 2026 07:55:00 +0000

Cal J. Halvorsen, a gerontological social work scholar and associate professor at Washington University’s Brown School, will step into a new leadership role this summer as co-director of the Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging. Beginning in July, Halvorsen will share leadership of the center with Brian Carpenter, a professor of psychological and brain in Arts & Sciences. He succeeds Nancy Morrow-Howell, the Betty Bofinger Brown Distinguished Professor of Social Policy at the Brown School, who is stepping back after more than a decade as co-director. Morrow-Howell will remain involved as a senior adviser. Halvorsen will also serve as assistant dean for faculty affairs at the Brown School beginning July 1. Dorian Traube, the Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean of...

The post Halvorsen named co-director of Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging first appeared on Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Halvorsen receives gerontology leadership award

admin — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 13:17:00 +0000

Cal J. Halvorsen, an associate professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, has received the Leadership Award from the Association for Gerontology Education in Social Work (AGESW). The award, given by the AGESW board of directors after an internal nomination and review process, honors faculty members who demonstrate exceptional leadership in social work education and aging, recognizing those who advance the field, mentor colleagues and students, and foster innovation in gerontology education. Halvorsen served on the AGESW board of directors from 2018 to 2020 and currently mentors doctoral students in the organization’s Pre-Dissertation Fellows Program on public and community-engaged scholarship. Halvorsen was praised by AGESW for his “consistent, high-impact leadership within AGESW and the wider field—elevating...

The post Halvorsen receives gerontology leadership award first appeared on Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Chung co-authors chapter in book on emerging trends in school social work

admin — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 17:34:47 +0000

The social work profession is rapidly evolving, driven by the growth of online mental health services, renewed attention to its history, and an expanding role in policy advocacy, particularly for marginalized communities. A new book explores these shifts and their implications for school social work practice. Saras Chung, a research associate professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, co-authored a chapter in “Emerging Trends in School Social Work Practice: Responding to Rapid Change in Educational Ecosystems,” published by Oxford University Press. Chung contributed Chapter 13, “Public School Districts as Policy Battlegrounds.” Her chapter explores the ethical and practical challenges school social workers face under restrictive school policies. It offers guidance on advocacy, maintaining ethical standards, and...

The post Chung co-authors chapter in book on emerging trends in school social work first appeared on Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Jabbari receives grant to study social mobility

Roger — Mon, 20 Oct 2025 18:38:35 +0000

Jason Jabbari, an assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a two-year $352,943 grant from Arnold Ventures to evaluate the impact of the Cristo Rey Network’s professional work-based learning model on social mobility and racial equity. The Cristo Rey Network, which serves low-income students, combines college-preparatory curriculum with a corporate work-study program in which students work one day per week at a local corporation. Jabbari, along with Shaun Dougherty of Boston College, Lauren Russell of the University of Pennsylvania, and Fahvyon Jimenez of Jimenez Strategy & Analytics, will work with a variety of administrative datasets to compare college and employment outcomes of Cristo Rey graduates to similar non-attending applicants. “By leveraging historical application...

The post Jabbari receives grant to study social mobility first appeared on Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Ahn explores AI, social work and inequality

admin — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 15:40:40 +0000

Spot Eunhye Ahn on campus in deep thought, and you might catch her wrestling with a question she considers both urgent and underexplored: What does “human-centered” really mean from a social work perspective when it comes to artificial intelligence? “It’s interesting, literally every day there’s some new aspect of the AI field,” said Ahn, an assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and an affiliated researcher with 17�Թ�’s new AI for Health Institute, which explores responsible uses of AI in health and social systems. But Ahn challenges the notion that AI is impartial. “AI is not neutral. It reflects the biases and structures of the society that created it,” she said. “I get really angry...

The post Ahn explores AI, social work and inequality first appeared on Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Friedman Center for Aging marks nearly 30 years of leadership, new home at Brown School

admin — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 18:53:44 +0000

For nearly three decades, the Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging at Washington University has been at the forefront of research and programs addressing the challenges and opportunities of an aging society, from health care and housing to preparing for retirement and combating ageism. The center has become a nationally recognized resource for training professionals and helping communities to support older adults. Now part of the Brown School, the Friedman Center is 17�Թ�’s only program dedicated exclusively to interdisciplinary aging research, education and community engagement. To celebrate its relocation, the center hosted a lively event on Sept. 25 in Hillman Hall’s Clark-Fox Forum, drawing more than 140 attendees, including students, faculty, alumni, community members and local leaders in aging services. ...

The post Friedman Center for Aging marks nearly 30 years of leadership, new home at Brown School first appeared on Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Stark Receives $435,000 UNICEF Grant

Roger — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 20:30:00 +0000

Lindsay Stark, a professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a one-year $435,000 grant from UNICEF for a project titled “Intervention Review and Implementation Research to Address Gender-based Violence in Emergencies.” The grant is a continuation of a long-term research collaboration between Stark and UNICEF to address gender-based violence in humanitarian emergencies. The new grant will build the evidence around three core humanitarian interventions for women and girls: humanitarian safe space programming, women’s collectives and parenting programming.

The post Stark Receives $435,000 UNICEF Grant first appeared on Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Jabbari Awarded $512,000 Grant from William T. Grant Foundation

Natasha — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 05:00:00 +0000

Jason Jabbari, research assistant professor with the Social Policy Institute (SPI) at Washington University in St. Louis, received a $512,00 grant from The William T. Grant Foundation to understand if and how the Choice Neighborhood Initiative (CNI) reduces racial inequalities in academic outcomes for children and youth. The project is a research-practice collaboration between SPI and Urban Strategies Inc., the largest implementation partner for the CNI providing wrap-around supports to CNI families, as well as Saint Louis Public Schools, Shelby County Schools, Seeding Success, and Baltimore City Public Schools. Read more about the effort on the Social Policy Institute website.

The post Jabbari Awarded $512,000 Grant from William T. Grant Foundation first appeared on Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Brown School Faculty Among Most-Cited Scientists

Natasha — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 06:00:00 +0000

Eleven faculty members from the Brown School have been named in the Stanford University – Elsevier list of the top 2% most-cited scientists in various disciplines worldwide. The database is created by experts at Stanford University, based on data from Elsevier’s Scopus, the publicly available abstract and citation database of over 100,000 top scientists and their publications in scholarly journals. The most recent dataset is based on the August 1, 2021 snapshot from Scopus that is updated to the citation year 2020. See the most recent data set here. Brown School faculty among the top 2% most-cited: *Installation ceremony scheduled for Wednesday, April 13, 2022. Learn more and register.

The post Brown School Faculty Among Most-Cited Scientists first appeared on Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Brown School Connects Artificial Intelligence to Social Work, Public Health Through Open Classroom and New Courses

Natasha — Sun, 26 Sep 2021 17:00:00 +0000

The intelligence may be artificial, but the enthusiasm for it is genuine. Artificial Intelligence (AI), characterized by machine and deep learning, will be the subject of several Open Classroom programs beginning Oct. 14 — and taught for the first time at the Brown School in two courses next year. AI is already transforming large swaths of science and industry in fields such as engineering and computer technology, but has been less prominent in the social sciences. “As policy analysts and quantitative modeling practitioners, we have applied a wide range of statistical methods to analyze patterns from structured data, but most data we encounter day-to-day is unstructured, such as images, texts, and video or audio recordings,” said Ruopeng An, associate professor...

The post Brown School Connects Artificial Intelligence to Social Work, Public Health Through Open Classroom and New Courses first appeared on Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Implementation Science Should Give Higher Priority to Health Equity

Natasha — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 17:00:00 +0000

Moving scientific research results into public health and patient care more quickly could have a significant impact on health equity, finds a new paper from researchers at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. Implementation science is the study of methods and strategies that help to speed evidence-based practice and research into regular use by public health and medical practitioners. “The rallying call for implementation science is that it takes 17 years for 14% of original research to reach patient care — this is sometimes called the ‘biomedical valley of death,’” said Ross Brownson, the Steven H. and Susan U. Lipstein Distinguished Professor and a leading researcher on dissemination and implementation science. He is co-author of the paper “Implementation...

The post Implementation Science Should Give Higher Priority to Health Equity first appeared on Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Purnell to Lead St. Louis Team Responding to COVID-19

Natasha — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 17:00:00 +0000

The Brown School’s Jason Purnell will lead a response team of over 40 St. Louis area nonprofits, social service agencies and governments to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. The COVID-19 Regional Response team aims to help people navigate resources and get help with needs including employment, food, housing, child care and legal aid. Purnell is an associate professor whose research focuses on how socioeconomic and cultural factors influence health behaviors and outcomes. He is the director of Health Equity Works, a Brown School initiative committed to translating research into community action to advance health equity in St. Louis. “Our region’s most vulnerable populations are historically underserved and this pandemic requires us to provide care and services in ways that no individual agency can...

The post Purnell to Lead St. Louis Team Responding to COVID-19 first appeared on Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Better Therapist-Patient Matching Could Improve Opioid Use Disorder Treatment Outcomes

Natasha — Fri, 09 Nov 2018 18:00:00 +0000

Therapist-patient profile matching for more effective treatment of substance use disorders (SUDs) is especially important to address the current opioid crisis, according to the author of a recent study on the issue from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. “The results from this study have important application to performance-based practice,” said the study’s lead author, David A. Patterson Silver Wolf, associate professor. “Given the high fail rates facing patients entering SUD treatment, it is imperative that traditional treatment approaches be challenged.” In the study led by Patterson Silver Wolf, researchers collected data from 11 SUD treatment outpatient programs, comprising 2,230 patients and 69 therapists. Analysis was conducted to understand the effect of therapist–patient profile matching on treatment...

The post Better Therapist-Patient Matching Could Improve Opioid Use Disorder Treatment Outcomes first appeared on Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

David Patterson: More Must Be Done to Address Opioid Crisis

Natasha — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 17:00:00 +0000

Opioids, including heroin and prescription drugs, killed 33,000-plus people in 2015, more than any year on record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. President Trump’s proposed budget aims to bring a $500 million increase in funding for prevention and treatment, but that amount isn’t enough to address the crisis, says an expert on substance use disorder treatment at Washington University in St. Louis. “The GOP’s developing health-care bill would strip away coverage for substance use disorder treatment for 1.3 million Americans during this opioid epidemic,” said David Patterson Silver Wolf, associate professor at the Brown School and director of the Community-Academic Partnership on Addiction. “According to American Society of Addiction Medicine, in 2015, drug overdose is the leading...

The post David Patterson: More Must Be Done to Address Opioid Crisis first appeared on Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.