School of Social Work News

Associate Professor Daphne Watkins won two of the four awards presented at the University of Michigan Fast Forward Medical Innovations (FFMI) program on November 17, 2017.  

Watkins, who competed among 15 teams of physicians and medical professionals, is the principal investigator for the YBMen Project, which was created to better understand and address the pressures and needs of young black men using popular social media platforms to provide mental health education and social support.  Watkins won the Health IT category, and the Crowd Favorite category.  

“The Medical Innovations program is a great way to learn how to grow ideas and make good use of customer discovery,” Watkins said.  “These awards are an acknowledgement that the work we’re doing is useful and important. They are very encouraging.”

Watkins continues to write grants to evaluate the YBMen Project and make it scalable and sustainable.

Director of Joint PhD Program and Associate Professor Daphne Watkins is one of five social work scholars selected to be featured at the Society for Social Work and Research's (SSWR) Brief and Brilliant TEDx-style session in January. This year’s conference theme is "Achieving Equal Opportunity, Equity and Justice". Related to this theme, each speaker will be asked to complete the statement “I dream a world….”. The Brief and Brilliant session was developed last year with the goal of translating social work research to engage a broad audience and emphasize the public relevance of this work.

Director of Joint PhD Program and Associate Professor Daphne Watkins was cited in the NBC News article, “Hip-hop works to break down mental health stigma for black men.”

Director of Joint Doctoral Program and Associate Professor Daphne Watkins' Twitter account (@WatkinsResearch) was ranked the #4 must-follow social media account in Ann Arbor by Concentrate Ann Arbor. 

Director of Joint PhD Program and Associate Professor Daphne Watkins was appointed to the Editorial Board for the Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work.

Director of the Joint Doctoral Program and Associate Professor Daphne Watkins was selected to be a featured speaker at the 2017 Institute Science Symposium at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study on the theme of epidemics. The Symposium is scheduled for October 27, 2017 at 9 AM. The school will livestream the event and create a video link for later viewing.

Joint Doctoral Program Director and Associate Professor Daphne Watkins’ article, “A qualitative comparison of DSM depression criteria to language used by older church-going African-Americans” was published in Aging and Mental Health.

Joint Doctoral Program Director and Associate Professor Daphne Watkins was named a Fellow of the Saint Louis University Health Criminology Research Consortium.