Greetings from Social Work Section Chair Jeanne Saunders
Dear Social Work Section Members,
As I begin my term as chair of the Social Work Section, I am excited at the opportunities before the Section and look forward to charting the future of the Section with all of you. I have been active in the Section for the past 10 years, though I had attended the APHA Annual Meeting many years before getting involved in the Section. Prior to becoming chair-elect and then chair, I served as the Section’s membership chair for two years. I presently am a faculty member at The University of Iowa School of Social Work. Before joining the university I worked in the child welfare arena and for the prevention of teen pregnancy and child abuse for about 20 years.
It was great to see many of you in Washington, D.C. at the Annual Meeting in November. Thanks to everyone who worked to make it a successful meeting. For those of you who were not able to make the trip to D.C., a few highlights of the Social Work Section’s events:
ü Congratulations to Bari Cornet, Insley-Evans Social Worker of the Year - please see her remarks included in this edition of the newsletter;
ü The Social Work Section sponsored five scientific sessions, one poster session and one invited session – thanks to Kim Jaffee who served as program chair and all of the presenters;
ü Even though they began very early, we held three business meetings to discuss the business and direction of our section;
ü Our booth was well attended, and a number of potential new members stopped by to learn more about the Section – thanks to Ed Saunders for coordinating the booth again this year;
ü At the close of the meeting, new officers and leaders of the Section who began their terms:
§ Chair: Jeanne Saunders
§ Chair-elect: Theora Evans
§ Secretary: Tammy Thomas
§ Membership Chair: Kim Jaffe
§ Program Chair: Robert Keefe
§ Newsletter/Website Editor: Jennifer Saunders
§ Governing Councilor: Gary Lounsberry
Thanks to Kim Jaffee, Section Councilor, and Deb Schild, Governing Councilor, who completed their terms in 2007. Included in this newsletter is a list of many of the Section leaders. Each edition of the newsletter will feature some of the Section leaders and a description of their roles within the Section.
One of my primary goals as chair of the Section is to facilitate communication among the leadership and among the membership as a whole. I believe this will increase our opportunities to support one another to strengthen the Section and in our daily work as public health social workers. I think this newsletter is one way to facilitate our communication, and I welcome your ideas for topics or announcements that would be of interest to the membership. Also our Section Web site is under transition/development and will be launched in the near future – another way to share information among the membership and others interested in this wonderful Section. Again, any ideas for topics or information to include are welcome.
A second goal I have for the Section is to welcome students and young professionals to the Section by encouraging their participation and bringing one or more of them to the next Annual Meeting in San Diego. (As I write this, we are expecting up to a foot of snow tonight in Iowa and San Diego sounds very inviting!)
Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any ideas for the Section or any questions you might have (jeanne-saunders@uiowa.edu). I look forward to serving as the chair of the Section and working with all of you during the next few years.
Warm regards,
Jeanne Saunders
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Congratulations to Bari Cornet: 2007 Social Worker of the Year
Bari Cornet, MS, MSW, MPH, was honored with the Insley-Evans Social Worker of the year award at the APHA Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Bari is presently the field work consultant and a lecturer at the UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare. She works closely with students interested in public health social work. Bari is recognized as having expertise in public health social work and focuses on maternal and child health. She has done extensive work in the MediCal Comprehensive Perinatal Services Program and MediCal Managed Care and in the areas of access to care and community centered planning.
Bari received her award at the Social Work section reception at the 2007 Annual Meeting. She is pictured (center) with Dean Lorraine Midanik (left) and Reg Hutchinson (right).
(These are excerpts of the comments made by Bari Cornet when she received the Insley Evans Public Health Social Worker of the Year Award from the APHA Social Work Section on Nov. 5, 2007 in Washington, D.C.)
Public Health Social Work: Our Past and Our Future
As I prepared to receive this wonderful award, I began to reflect on not only Virginia Insley and Juanita Evans, but also on the rest of the history of public health social work. Our history shapes who we are as a profession as well as guiding us into the future. I will speak about the early days of the profession on into its future. It is a continuum that reaches to combined and interdisciplinary professional education.
Sources of Public Health and Social Work
Public health and social work grew from similar roots. Both were concerned with social reform and social justice. The Charity Organizations Society (1887) was founded to deal with poverty in the urban slums. Although we think of the control of communicable diseases as being the province of public health, it was the Charity Organization Society in New York and its social workers who did the first comprehensive analysis of tuberculosis in 1903. Both disciplines were (and are) concerned with immigrant populations in urban centers.
The two disciplines have a shared historic core mission. Both believe in the worth & dignity of the individual. Both share a commitment to the improvement of the quality of life of individuals. They promote social justice, protect and enhance community well-being and ameliorate complex social health problems. The major health problems to be solved today are those which require social work interventions. Advances in medical technology have virtually eliminated handicapping conditions resulting from infectious diseases such as TB. But those same technologies have enabled very low birth weight babies with handicapping conditions to survive and have lifelong chronic illnesses.
The two fields rely on each other’s expertise: epidemiology from Public Health, psychosocial determinants of health from Social Work, community organizing from both at different times, and analysis of the social environment from Social Work.
We often refer to public health as having the prevention focus. But it comes from both places. Primary prevention (preventing those conditions that might lead to illness or disability) is the province of public health.