School of Social Work News

Professor William Elliott III spoke with San Francisco’s KQED about how children’s savings accounts can provide hope and change perspectives. “You are giving families access to an institution that allows them to build wealth that’s coupled with a change in attitude and reflecting on what’s now achievable for them,” Elliott said.

Associate Professor Xiaoling Xiang is the principal investigator of a recently-funded federal grant from the Administration for Community Living’s National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research.  The three-year study will focus on evaluating the real-world effects of the Empower@Home program on social participation among older adults with disabilities. Empower@Home is an online self-help program for depression based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy. 

“I am thrilled to build on the momentum of our recent NIH R01 award to further expand Empower@Home’s community impact,” said Xiang. “Our goal is to extend its reach to older adults with disabilities and broaden its focus beyond a single condition to encompass outcomes like social participation and connections. This brings us closer to achieving our mission of promoting the multi-dimensional aspects of healthy aging.”

Assistant Professor Fernanda Cross spoke with WXYZ Detroit about how her own experience as an immigrant inspired the creation of the Latinx Youth Empowerment Series, also known as YES, which connects immigrant students at Ypsilanti Community High School with mental health services.  

“Immigrating is difficult. The children are having to do a lot of the navigating the new culture. They’re navigating the new language for the parents as they are learning the language themselves,” Cross said. “For the adolescents that come from undocumented parents, there’s always this constant fear of getting separated from the family, having one of the caregivers deported or being deported themselves in case the adolescents,” she said.  “These students were very likely never going to see a provider if it had not been for these groups.”

YES has been so successful that the Michigan Health Endowment Foundation is funding six additional groups over the next two years.

Clinical Associate Professor Ayesha Ghazi Edwin was featured in a PBS News story on the importance of voting to new U.S. citizens. Ghazi Edwin was born in England; her family came to the U.S. when she was three. Her mother says that the day their family received their U.S. citizenship was one of the happiest days of her life.

“People always say representation is important, and I have too. But I didn’t actually realize the truth of the statement until today,” Ghazi Edwin said. “Having an Asian American in the highest level of office does feel like empowerment and protection, because right now we’re playing a system and a game that has been run by people who don’t look like me.”

Professor William Elliott III spoke with the Washington Post for an article about the new Brilliant Futures program, a child savings account program for two cohorts of students in Prince George’s County in Maryland.  

Elliott discussed how college savings programs can give participants long-term hope.  “Oftentimes when we think about poverty, we only think about the starving kid who can’t eat, not understanding that the additional problem and very significant problem with being poor is that you don’t think you have a future,” he said.

Associate Professor Xiaoling Xiang is the principal investigator on a newly funded R01 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. The study will span the next five years and focus on the implementation and effectiveness of Empower@Home, a digital mental health intervention designed to address depression in homebound older adults.

“I've dedicated thousands of hours to developing and refining Empower@Home, and with this new R01 funding, we can now bring the program beyond research and into real-world communities. We will work closely with aging service agencies and train non-specialist agency staff readily available even in low-resource settings to support the program’s uptake and usage,” said Xiang. “Our goal is to create a scalable model that breaks down barriers to mental health care and delivers person-centered, technology-driven treatments to homebound older adults.”

U-M’s Anti-Racism Collaborative, an initiative of the National Center for Institutional Diversity, has announced the 2024 Anti-Racism Grants.

Professor Joseph Himle and Associate Professor Addie Weaver have received an Anti-Racism Grant for their project FARWell: The Formula for Anti-Racist Wellness and Therapy. This project  — a community-university partnership between My Brother’s Keeper, Formula 734, and social work researchers at U-M and The Ohio State University — will support the development and evaluation of a transdiagnostic cognitive behavioral therapy for depression and anxiety, designed for and by young Black men.

Joint PhD Student Irene Routté has received an Anti-Racism Graduate Research Grant for her project Landscapes of (Im)Mobility: Congolese Refugee Youth, the U.S. Resettlement System and Spatial Negotiations of Belonging.

Associate Professor Odessa Gonzalez Benson has received an Anti-Racist Digital Research Initiative Grant for her project A Digital Collection as Narrative and Visualization of the Journey of Resettled Refugees.

The Anti-Racism Grants are sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Research in partnership with the National Center for Institutional Diversity’s Anti-Racism Collaborative, which aims to support and amplify the work of anti-racism scholars at U-M.

Associate Professor Anao Zhang's article "The efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy for mental health and quality of life among individuals diagnosed with cancer: A systematic review and meta-analysis," was published in Cancer Medicine and featured in Everyday Health. Zhang says the findings confirm that cognitive behavioral therapy can help many people cope with the negative feelings that come up while living with cancer.