Kathleen Ell, DSW, the Endowed Professor of Poverty, Ethnicity and Health at the University of Southern California School of Social Work, has directed the school’s Hamovitch Center for Science in the Human Services and the Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research. Her research career is uniquely distinguished within social work by a) her leadership of research teams that include academic and community-based physicians, economists and anthropologists, and care system leaders aimed at bridging social-behavioral and medical research, and b) a focus on understanding and reducing health disparities via engaging patients, addressing system integration and facilitating the sustainable provision of care in community practice.
Ell’s work is notable for its emphasis on translating research into “real world” and sustainable community practice while maintaining scientific rigor inherent to optimal large-scale randomized clinical trial research design and applying relevant theory. She has received over $14 million in federal funded research over the past 10 years to conduct randomized clinical trials on collaborative interdisciplinary care models, structured interventions and care management algorithms to improve follow-up of abnormal cancer screens among low-income minority women, the detection and treatment of depression among older adults in diverse home health care systems, the detection and treatment of major depression among low-income minority patients with cancer (the nation’s first large-scale trial and the first model with social workers as the clinical depression specialist) and patients with diabetes (the first large -scale trial with public sector minority patients) and a patient navigation social work intervention to improve access and adherence to cancer treatment among low-income minority women.
Presentation: Reducing Health Disparities via Integrating Mental Health Care within the General Health Care System: A Call for Innovative Social Work Research and Education
While the majority of large scale and comparative effectiveness clinical trials in health care systems aimed at reducing health disparities has been conducted by other disciplines, the presentation will focus on not only the evidence to date, but the need for social work to significantly increase its participation in and leadership of future randomized trials. Evidence will be reviewed that underscores effective approaches to integrate disciplines, theory, practical organizational and cost considerations, and cultural competence.
