NYU Silver School of Social Work

Regina Wu, MSW ’23, is a Los Angeles native who is in the first year of our MSW Program at Shanghai and New York. In their field placement at Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital, Regina did research in English-language journals on best practices for transgender and intersex care, which they translated into Chinese and presented to doctors and nurses from the hospital’s department of plastic and reconstructive surgery. Regina’s presentation helped spur the doctors’ and nurses’ interest in involving social workers in support for patients and their families, resulting in better collaboration between the medical team and social workers and improved gender-affirming care for patients.

As a Community Organizer at Bedford Stuyvesant Community Partnership Program, Ebonee Mears both creates strong partnerships with organizations serving the community and connects families in the community to the resources and services partner organizations provide. Said Ebonee, “I think I’ve been able to combine micro and macro in this job because of the strong clinical training I got at Silver as well as the close connections I made with some of the professors who were doing macro work and encouraged me to pursue opportunities that felt right for me.”

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.”

Among those at highest risk for exposure to COVID-19 is the large population of frontline essential workers in lower status occupations, in which Black and Latino people are overrepresented. These workers, however, experience serious multi-level impediments to COVID-19 testing. As part of the National Institutes of Health’s RADx® initiative, a multidisciplinary research team led by Professor and Associate Dean for Research Marya Gwadz is using an engineering-inspired framework called the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST) to optimize an intervention to increase regular COVID-19 testing for these workers.

Professor Michelle R. Munson has made it her mission to help the mental health system better respond to marginalized young adults whose mental health challenges, if left untreated, impede their ability to form relationships, hold jobs, live independently, and function well in society.