NYU Silver School of Social Work

A clinical social worker within the Division of Comfort and Palliative Care at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Rachel Rusch is one of twelve emerging palliative care leaders from across the country chosen for the seventh cohort of the Cambia Health Foundation Sojourns® Scholar Leadership Program. Rachel, who as a student was an MSW Fellow in our Zelda Foster Studies Program in Palliative and End-of-Life Care, is using her Sojourns Scholar funding to implement two interventions rooted in the power of story to promote pediatric palliative care patient and provider perseverance.

As Director of Digital Media for Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Luisa Lopez helps keep 8.7 million borough residents informed about local developments and brings her social work perspective to rooms where policy is made. She is also President of the Latino Social Work Coalition and Scholarship Fund, among many other volunteer endeavors. She recently gave the keynote address at the annual Congressional Research Institute for Social Work and Policy Student Advocacy Day ‒ which she first attended as an NYU Silver representative back in 2017 ‒ and inspired a new cohort of social work students to make systems-level change.

While earning his degree at Silver, Michael Sanders (front row center), MSW ’19—father, army veteran, and entrepreneur—was the vice president of the NYU Military Alliance, an NYU Social Sector Leadership Diversity Fellow, a Silver Student Leadership Council Fellow, a member of the Students of Color Collective, and one of two students on the School’s Social Justice Praxis Committee. Michael, who is now a Social Service Advocate at the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Boston, observed, “Being a social worker means fighting for social justice and never forgetting our responsibility to our clients, to ourselves, and to society as a whole.”

The communities that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 are the same ones disproportionately involved with the child welfare system. Associate Professor Darcey Merritt is studying the challenges and barriers the pandemic has posed for these vulnerable families as well the caseworkers who deliver services to them.

An expert in HIV prevention and care, Professor and Center for Latino Adolescent and Family Health Director Vincent Guilamo-Ramos is a leading voice in drawing attention to the largely overlooked HIV crisis among Latinx in the U.S. As an appointed member of the U.S. Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, he provides direct guidance to the Department of Health and Human Services on the country’s response to the epidemic.