What does it mean to be a public health social worker? CISWH’s Boston University Advancing Leadership in Public Health Social Work (BU-ALPS) project explores the career paths and impact of MSW/MPH alumni.

Dan Hogan, MSW, MPH, Substance User Health Program Manager, Codman Square Health Center, Boston, MA 

Dan is the Substance User Health Program Manager for Codman Square Health Center in Boston. He graduated from the Boston University MSW/MPH program in 2012/2014 and majored in Clinical Practice at the School of Social Work and Health Policy/Management at the School of Public Health. Even before graduate school, Dan knew he wanted the skills that an MSW/MPH program could provide: “I knew I wanted the ‘boots on the ground’ skills that clinical social work provided, while also obtaining a broader public health lens. Through integrating public health and social work, I hoped to inform my practice and to explore systems-oriented solutions that could respond to the needs of clinical social workers who provide substance user services.”

Dan sees his current role as a “true blend” of clinical social work and public health. He endeavors to “use the two disciplines to advocate for humane and sensible polices around substance user health, as well as to engage in harm reduction, community engagement, education, prevention and ultimately to help reform current substance use methodologies.” Dan points out that “both lenses are crucial in developing the skill sets need to approach these challenges. Substance user health does not improve based on a clinical visit alone,” because while individuals do need treatment, they also need opportunities and systems-level services that that can impact substance use. “I believe that all public health and social work professionals are best equipped to deal with the suffering in our society when they’re able to view social ills through both individual and systems lenses. By treating the individual, we can help one person in a profound and meaningful way. But integrating that help into a broader, public health and public-facing approach, we can support the revitalization of communities that have been devastated by addiction and other health inequities.”

“I believe that all public health and social work professionals are best equipped to deal with the suffering in our society when they’re able to view social ills through both individual and systems lenses.”

Dan notes that MSW/MPH trained social workers have the ability to step outside a narrow professional viewpoint and see this greater mission. He also feels well-equipped “to wear multiple hats” while working in health care, and yet he admits to occasional challenges: “There are moments when members of one profession are unable to see things the same way you do as a public health social work professional. For example, a clinical social worker may feel that their priority is to the individual client and that everything else is secondary. The public health practitioner may view that intervention as one of many, and may fail to understand the power of many individual interventions at the population health level. The MSW/MPH professional must make difficult decisions at times, choosing between values that may not always be aligned such as population versus individual orientation. A truly enlightened public health social work professional must balance these difficult choices and attempt to address both. At times, this burden may tax or vex the MSW/MPH professional, but it’s our obligation to stay the course and see initiatives through.”

Dan’s advice to MSW/MPH students: Start with a small focus and build yourself up from there. “Often, we don’t know the true nature of the work we think we want to do until we actually experience it ourselves. My original career goals share many elements of my current one, however, the details have changed. Time, place, and my own experiences have resulted in an ever-evolving view of health systems, and the realization that change occurs through gentle, yet sustained advocacy.”

This profile is excerpted from Advancing Leadership in Public Health Social Work Education: MSW/MPH Program Handbook. This free resource, designed to help schools with their efforts to establish, promote, improve, and evaluate MSW/MPH programs, was produced by CISWH’s BU-ALPS project and funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.

What does it mean to be a public health social worker? CISWH’s Boston University Advancing Leadership in Public Health Social Work (BU-ALPS) project explores the career paths and impact of MSW/MPH alumni.

Allen Jackson, MSW, MPH, Senior Researcher, 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, MA

Allen is a 1997/1998 alumnus of the Boston University MSW/MPH Program, where he majored in Macro Practice in social work and concentrated in Social and Behavioral Sciences in public health. Allen was initially drawn to the MSW/MPH program due to interest in HIV/AIDS prevention and his first job after graduation was with the Boston Public Health Commission as a contract manager for the Ryan White CARE Act funding (HIV/AIDS services).

For the past ten years, Allen has been Senior Researcher for a healthcare workers’ union that represents many different kinds of workers such as technologists and care attendants. As a labor union researcher, Allen relies on the “hard skills” such as statistics and data analysis, as well as on his macro social work skills. “All the writing and research skills I gained in the MSW/MPH Program definitely helped prepare me for this job. I crunch a lot of data, so all those SAS and SPSS courses were helpful in making sure I was competent and prepared to play that role here. The macro practice orientation has been supremely helpful as my organization pursues our policy agenda to make sure, for instance, that nursing homes and community hospitals are properly funded and reflect the healthcare needs of the future.” On a day-to-day level, Allen says “My job involves the analysis and synthesis of healthcare-related financial and operations data related to the union’s organizing goals.” He prepares memos, reports, studies and other documents for internal and external audiences on various topics.

“We’re not just a union of healthcare workers, we’re a community advocacy organization too…it feels good to work somewhere that shares and acts on your shared social justice values.”

Work issues can range from efforts to find sustainable funding solutions for nursing homes, providing input on upcoming healthcare mergers, running agency workgroups or helping to draft new regulations. Allen also serves on the Chelsea Board of Health, which “maintains the city’s public health standards and protects its environmental resources through community education, and by promulgating reasonable rules and regulations pertaining to those matters.” Here he’s found his training in health policy and working with community groups useful in helping guide the council’s work.

Allen points out that his agency is engaged in advocacy for improvement in the healthcare system, often advocating for the communities where the unions’ members live to promote health equity and work for social justice. “I love that my job and my organization are involved in the community. We host annual health fairs, back-to-school drives, and candidate forums. We participate in various parades and cultural celebration and violence prevention initiatives. We’re not just a union of healthcare workers, we’re a community advocacy organization too. Our work is bigger than organizing workers and bargaining contracts. And it feels good to work somewhere that shares and acts on your shared social justice values.”

Allen’s advice for MSW/MPH students? “I suggest that students identify the types of employers they might want to work for to ensure that the skills they’re developing and learning ‘fit’ the type of organization they’re aiming for; having both degrees is great, and locating a place where you can use them both early on will be helpful to them.”

This profile is excerpted from Advancing Leadership in Public Health Social Work Education: MSW/MPH Program Handbook. This free resource, designed to help schools with their efforts to establish, promote, improve, and evaluate MSW/MPH programs, was produced by CISWH’s BU-ALPS project and funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.

What does it mean to be a public health social worker? CISWH’s Boston University Advancing Leadership in Public Health Social Work (BU-ALPS) project explores the career paths and impact of MSW/MPH alumni.

Dan Do, LICSW, MSW, MPH, Integration Care Manager Project Director, Community Health Center, Lynn, MA 

Dan Do is a 2013/2014 graduate of the MSW/MPH Program at Boston University. He majored in Clinical Practice at Boston University School of Social Work and Social and Behavioral Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health. Dan says that “Originally, I’d wanted to go to medical school. But then I was introduced to public health as an undergraduate and realized I was interested in health as a whole, including epidemiology and social sciences. During my gap year working with City Year, I found social work and that’s when I knew I would only apply to MSW/MPH programs.”

Like many MSW/MPH students, Dan was drawn to both clinical and macro social work courses, and multiple areas within public health such as health communications, health policy, and maternal and child health. He was inspired, when, during one of his courses, the students acted as consultants to the Boston Public Health Commission’s work in the Charter School system. He used all his social work and public health skills to help craft a set of recommendations for wellness programing into a “truly great deliverable. The BPHC thought so too, as they created a position to implement the wellness recommendations and hired one of the students to fill the role. That was my ‘ah-ha’ moment when I realized what it could be like to be a public health social worker.”

“Every day, I get to train a diverse team of providers to better understand mental illness.”

“My current title is Integration Care Manager Project Director; I direct an Integrated Primary Care team within a behavioral health team that is located in a larger Federally Qualified Health Center. My team is comprised of a family physician, family nurse practitioner, two registered nurses, a medical assistant, a peer support coach, a community health worker, a substance abuse specialist and a referrals specialist. We collaborate with 40 therapists and psychopharmacology providers to increase access to primary care services for people with serious mental illness and to help keep them engaged in care. I also manage the 4 year 1.6 million-dollar SAMHSA grant that provides funding for this team and am the Site Principal Investigator for Harvard’s Center for Primary Care Advancing Teams Accelerator Program. This is a great project which enables the team to implement hypertension treatment in an integrated behavioral health setting. My education plays a big role in the work I do now…having the advanced degree in public health allowed me to do more systems thinking and analysis.”

He notes that public health social work is increasingly visible in the arena of primary care and behavioral health integration. “This position is certainly public health social work. I utilize my skills as a clinically trained social worker with a public health background in an interprofessional setting. Every day, I get to train a diverse team of providers to better understand mental illness, to apply a social work lens to engage people in treatment, to utilize public health programming and design to create new health promotion activities, and to evaluate them for their efficacy and efficiency.”

Dan’s advice for students and the field: Be flexible in how you conceptualize public health social work. “It is not public health AND social work that you are doing. It is public health social work. I think people try to define which parts of them are public health and which are social work and that impedes a full integration at the conceptual level. You want to be able to dance between both realms seamlessly without worrying about which field is carrying the weight. Social work as a whole is a toolkit and a lens to view, define and address issues from a social justice and strengths perspective. Public health is the science and methodology at a population level which helps you act on those issues. It is possible and important to integrate both of these, regardless of your area of practice.”

Note: Dan recently left his position to return to doctoral education. He maintains his private practice serving culturally diverse populations.

This profile is excerpted from Advancing Leadership in Public Health Social Work Education: MSW/MPH Program Handbook. This free resource, designed to help schools with their efforts to establish, promote, improve, and evaluate MSW/MPH programs, was produced by CISWH’s BU-ALPS project and funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.

 

What does it mean to be a public health social worker? CISWH’s Boston University Advancing Leadership in Public Health Social Work (BU-ALPS) project explores the career paths and impact of MSW/MPH alumni.

Bonnie Wennerstrom, MSW, MPH, Healthier Washington Connector, Seattle, WA 

Bonnie Wennerstrom is a 2011/2012 graduate of the MSW/MPH Program at Boston University, where she majored in Clinical Practice at the School of Social Work and Maternal and Child Health at the School of Public Health.

Bonnie chose an MSW/MPH program as a result of a workplace encounter with a social worker. “While working at Planned Parenthood, I had the opportunity to participate in an agency-sponsored program called Planned Parenthood University. At one point, I asked the instructor, an MSW, about her graduate education and she told me that if she had it to do over again she would have done an MSW/MPH program. I started looking and saw that MSW/MPH education would encompass both person-focused interventions and population-level systems change. At the time, I wanted to focus on reproductive health and saw that the marriage of social work and public health would allow for the study of both healthcare and human behavior, which is important for understanding reproductive and sexual health, and for influencing outcomes in this area. I was unsure of my exact career goals at the time, but the professional options for someone with MSW/MPH training seemed to be broad enough to allow me to keep my plans open-ended.”

Bonnie further observes, “Within public health social work, my area of study and emphasis has always been healthcare, broadly defined, but scoped within the United States system and landscape.” Following graduation, Bonnie worked as a Health Center Manager for two busy Planned Parenthood offices in the Pacific Northwest. In 2016, she joined the Washington State Health Care Authority, where her job title is “Connector.” To better understand what she does, it’s important to understand the agency. The Washington State Health Care Authority (HCA) is a cabinet-level state agency primarily responsible for administering Medicaid and public employee/school employee health benefits. Statewide and multi-sectoral, HCA supports health system transformation by focusing on value in health care, systems integration and addressing unmet social needs. The work addresses many areas: population health, rural health, behavioral health, public health, social determinants, health equity, regional collaboration, data strategies, and more. The agency budget is braided between state funds, federal funds, and federal, state, and local grants.

“I truly believe in the transformative power of public health social work. It is not just the marriage of two skill sets, but instead represents a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Because these projects require collaboration across government agencies, tribes, health plans, traditional and nontraditional providers, business, and others, Bonnie’s “connector” position was created. She acts as an intermediary between all internal aspects of the agency’s work, bringing people and projects together to help move all systems, more efficiently and cohesively, to achieve the agency’s goals. Bonnie’s everyday work involves a complex array of activities: managing contracts between agencies, translating policy recommendations for operations and finance, providing thought partnership to multiple groups, writing reports for grant compliance, convening partners and stakeholders, and making recommendations to interagency leadership.

Bonnie notes that she proudly displays both degrees in her signature, even though “the concept of public health social work or a public health social worker does not exist within this agency.” She is also proud of the successes she has had on the job and observes that she is able to influence the direction of the agency’s work, successfully convene groups, and facilitate collaboration across stakeholder differences.

In reflecting on the respective roles of social work and public health, she notes, “From my perspective, public health has the ability to understand and influence the levers at the highest levels of the health and wellness systems in our society, something that social work has traditionally not been able to do. Social work supports individuals and programs; it engages in community development and advocacy. Public health picks it up at that point, and moves it to the federal, and even global, levels.” She notes that traditional public health is sometimes challenged by understanding how vulnerable individuals and groups experience public health programs and policies. She appreciates that she has a social work skill set that enables understanding of such issues as intergenerational trauma and the links between social services and social determinants of health. This has helped by providing a needed context in making determinations about which services and initiatives will have positive impact on vulnerable people who need it the most.

Bonnie’s clinical skills are never far away. “Often, my clinical skills are used with my colleagues! With any cross- disciplinary initiative that involves several groups of passionate people with different values, moving forward can be a challenge, and being able to set up safe spaces for discussion and negotiation has been powerful.”

“I truly believe in the transformative power of public health social work. It is not just the marriage of two skill sets, but instead represents a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Despite this, being a public health social worker requires the ability to navigate uncharted waters. You need to be a pioneer and a champion of a professional role and skill set that is not universally recognized.”

Her recommendation to current and future MSW/MPH students? “It’s fine for students to be unsure about what they want to do, and to let some career questions remain unanswered. Because we are innovators, it does not necessarily make sense to have it all figured out ahead of time. The process of bringing these two degrees and fields together will help you evolve into your own definition of an innovative public health social work practitioner.”

This profile is excerpted from Advancing Leadership in Public Health Social Work Education: MSW/MPH Program Handbook. This free resource, designed to help schools with their efforts to establish, promote, improve, and evaluate MSW/MPH programs, was produced by CISWH’s BU-ALPS project and funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.