Wurz Wins Grant, Snags Student Stipends

Wurzweiler has been awarded a three-year grant that enables it to expand its emphasis on social work and gerontology. Funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation and managed by the New York Academy of Medicine, the program is The Hartford Partnership Program for Aging Education. Its innovation is in building partnerships between universities and community agencies that offer students hands-on and varied experiences caring for older adults across a range of settings. The funding awards stipends to MSW students whose career interests are in working with older persons. Students selected for the stipends will participate in a rotational model of field practice, working with a variety of older populations.

Community agencies partnering with WSSW in the program are:

• The Bronx Jewish Community Council
• Fort Washington Housing and Services for Older Persons
• The Jewish Community Relations Council
• The Jewish Home and Hospital
• New York City Housing Court

Wurzweiler Partnership Program students will spend their second year field internship in two of these agencies, getting to know different service systems and experiencing the diversity found among older persons.

The grant will enable Wurzweiler to offer additional forums focused on aging in the form of seminars, video presentations, and lunch and learn programs, for the benefit of all students. As a Hartford Partnership Program grantee, the school joins over 60 other schools of social work nationwide which are united in their goal of graduating gerontological social workers to meet the social service needs of older persons and their families.

Profs Strolin-Goltzman, Auerbach & Bonuck Investigate SBHCs

School based-health centers (SBHCs) are one of the most dynamic innovations in health and education in recent years.

John Schlitt, executive director of the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care, recently told met with congressional staffers to bring them up to date on SBHC's.

School-based health centers were born of a movement to bridge health and education with the explicit objective of keeping school-aged children and youth healthy so that they experience the fewest possible barriers to learning. In a time of crisis, school-based health centers take their work a step further to respond to individual, school and community needs.

Whether it’s an extremely public crisis etched in our collective consciousness with grim detail, or the silent crisis of anxiety and depression among our youth, school-based health centers provide some of the basic tools to ensure student success by keeping young people strong, healthy and able to learn(Read all of the capitol hill briefing on SBHCs).

But exactly how affective are SBHCs? To find out, three members of Wurzweiler's research faculty, Professors Jessica Strolin-Goltzman, Charles Auerbach, and Karen Bonuck (also on the faculty of Albert Einstein College of Medicine) are undertaking a city-wide evaluation of SBHCs. Strolin-Goltzman described the process in a note to What's New at Wurzweiler:

The project will be divided into two phases. In phase one, the evaluation team will catalogue the availability and utilization of health related programs and services in school based health centers (SBHC) in NYC. The team will also complete a retrospective quasi experimental study of the impact of SBHCs on the learning environment.

Phase two of the study will collect primary data in SBHC schools and non SBHC schools to investigate the impact of SBHC on overall school climate and teacher satisfaction.

Mason & Clemans Propose Group Model for Rape Survivors

The current issue of Affilia includes an article by faculty members Susan Mason and Shanti Clemans titled, Participatory research for rape survivors groups: A model for practice.

The article describes how a participatory research model can help the healing process for rape survivors. The article explains how research oriented groups can be structured to document each member's survival experience in a format that can benefit future rape survivors, and move the group towards empowerment and growth.

Click here for the citation and abstract, or here to purchase a copy of the article from Sage.