Research Office News

Assistant Professor Ashley Cureton has received the 2024 Lester Monts Award from the U-M Center for Educational Outreach. The Lester Monts Award is a distinguished honor for faculty and staff who have collaborated with our team and contributed exceptionally to advancing educational outreach on campus and beyond. Cureton was selected for her inspiring commitment to initiatives including the Michigan Pre-College and Youth Conference, and Raise Scholars; the development of new collaborations with school partners; and her service and significant contributions in the field of social work.

Clinical Associate Professor Daicia Price is quoted in a Crain’s Detroit article on the challenges in creating specialized units to respond to mental health emergency calls. The Detroit Police Department, which created a mental health unit at the end of 2022, received over 16,000 calls last year that involved someone in mental distress — or more than 43 calls per day. That unit has grown to 22 officers, three sergeants, a lieutenant and six behavioral health specialists. But finding social workers and psychologist to work in these units is a challenge. Michigan is facing a shortage of mental health professonals and, as Price noted, these community programs simply can’t compete with private practice. 

“We were providing training to co-responders, and they went out in the field and found out it wasn’t suitable,” Price said. “They can go into private practice or the private sector and make $30,000 more with half the responsibilities. How do we train behavioral health individuals to be in these settings and make sure they deliver that public service and compensated the way they should when they can sit in an office with people with milder disorders and make more money?”

Assistant Professor Katie Schultz is a principal investigator on a recently awarded R01 grant, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. This longitudinal, mixed methods study will examine changes in the social networks of American Indian youth across adolescence and collect community-level social network data to identify optimal timing and strategies for culturally grounded prevention of substance use, suicide and exposure to violence at the micro (individual) and macro (community) levels.  

“I’m excited to continue this work with my colleagues and our community partners to build upon findings from our previous work, the Tribal Adolescent Connections Study,” said Schultz. “This new study will further our understanding of how social networks, a salient feature of American Indian culture, might operate and be harnessed in culturally grounded, preventive interventions.”

Assistant Professor Odessa Gonzalez Benson has joined the editorial board of Social Service Review. The journal publishes original research on social issues, social welfare policy and social work practice. Established in 1927, it is the oldest continually published social welfare journal in the U.S.

Rita Hu has successfully defended her dissertation, “The Role of Social Relationships in the Development and Consequences of Self-Perceptions of Aging across the Lifespan.” Her committee included Lydia Li (co-chair) and Ruth Dunkle. 

Hu has accepted a Provost's Postdoctoral Fellowship and will transition to a tenure-track assistant professor position in 2026 at the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice, University of Chicago.

Associate Professor Robert Ortega has joined the editorial board of Child Welfare. The peer-reviewed journal keeps readers abreast of the special problems facing millions of children, families, parents, caregivers and the child welfare professionals who serve them. As an editorial board member, Ortega will help guide the trajectory of the journal, review article submissions and share his related knowledge of the discipline.

Professor Emeritus Barry Checkoway’s new book, “Youth Dialogues on Race and Ethnicity: Challenging Segregation, Strengthening Diversity,” has been published by Oxford University Press. The book illustrates how young people can collaborate across boundaries and actively participate in the decisions that affect their lives and transform their communities.

Daphne Watkins was appointed as the Letha A. Chadiha Collegiate Professor of Social Work. Watkins is the founding director of the Gender and Health Research (GendHR) Lab, the Certificate Program in Mixed Methods Research, and the award-winning Young Black Men, Masculinities, and Mental Health (YBMen) Project, which leverages technology to provide mental health education and social support for young Black men.

Watkins’ research focuses on how gender differences and health disparities influence the mental health of Black Americans, with the aim of increasing what we know about mental disorders and how they impact the health and health behaviors of Black men. She has built an interdisciplinary conceptual framework of mental health that integrates role socialization and intersectional understanding of the cultural positions of Black men given additional other social identities of age, education, ethnicity, social support, and life stress. Watkins is also a University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor.