In 2023, Washington state was awarded $6 million from the U.S. Department of Education to create a pipeline from Washington state’s five accredited Masters in Social Work training programs to K-12 schools. Called the Workforce for Student Well-being Initiative (WSW), 100 aspiring school social workers will receive conditional scholarships based on their financial need so the cost of getting an education is not a barrier to their getting an advanced degree and then committing to working in a high-need public or tribal school. The goal of the WSW is to help all K-12 students in Washington to thrive by advancing the careers of skilled school social work professionals through training and mentorship.
Targeted Condition: Health disparities
Global Health Experiential Fellowship
The Global Health Experiential Fellowship (GHEF) is a Global South–North simultaneous training program that prepares students and early-career professionals to become global health researchers. Based in rural Uganda, the fellowship offers immersive, mentored experience in study design, data collection, implementation science, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Fellows contribute to ongoing community-based research alongside local partners, gaining practical skills in ethical engagement, cross-cultural research, and field-based methods. GHEF provides a distinctive opportunity to build research capacity, strengthen career development, and contribute to locally led global health initiatives through Empower Through Health.
Raising Washington
A partnership to provide comprehensive perinatal mental health and parenting support for the first 1,000 days
The Raising Washington Initiative seeks to develop an evidence-based fully integrated perinatal support program that will offer mental health care, parent training and support services for the first 1,000 days of a baby’s life (conception through child’s 2nd birthday) for every high-risk baby born in Washington. This will include creating care pathways informed by the needs of patients and providers, navigators to help guide families through the many care transitions in the perinatal period and accessible information to keep parents and babies healthy.
To learn more this work, please contact Project Manager Lori Ferro, MHA at ljf9@uw.edu.
Empower Through Health
Empower Through Health (ETH) is a healthcare, research, and education 501c3 organization operating in rural eastern Uganda. ETH runs a health center that provides general medical care for surrounding communities and delivers psychiatric and neurological services across Buyende District (population >400,000). ETH’s research focuses on reducing demand-side barriers to care and partnering with existing community structures to improve mental health outcomes and support recovery after mental health crises. ETH hosts the Global Health Experiential Fellowship (GHEF), a hands-on training program that pairs Ugandan and U.S. trainees on community-engaged research. ETH is also expanding its education mission by launching a primary school to strengthen long-term community wellbeing.
Canoe Journey: Land, water, language and culture for youth wellbeing
The Canoe Journey study is an exploratory study aimed at examining the acceptability and fit of motivational interviewing (MI) and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) among American Indian and Alaska Native youth and young adult Canoe Journey participants. The team will develop a list of MI and DBT approaches in collaboration with Canoe Journey partners, and exploring the acceptability and fit of the approaches during Canoe Journey events in 2025, along with a list of tribally specific approaches to healing mental health in collaboration with Canoe Journey partners and confirm knowledge of these approaches among participants in 2026. The team will examine the relationship between measures of wellness with knowledge and use of MI, DBT, and tribally specific approaches to healing mental health in 2027, along with the acceptability and fit of a relational mental health intervention among Canoe Journey participants.
CANOE partnership: Cancer Awareness, Navigation, Outreach, and Equitable Indigenous Health Outcomes
The CANOE Partnership: Cancer Awareness, Navigation, Outreach, and Equitable Indigenous Health Outcomes responds to the need to improve cancer outcomes for American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities. Our Overall Specific Aims are: (1) Improve rates of cessation of commercial tobacco smoking among a nationally recruited sample of AI/AN adults (Research Project 1); 2) Improve rates of lung cancer screenings among our Tribal partner populations in the Consortium’s catchment area (Research Project 3); 3)Prepare the next generation of researchers in Indigenous cancer equity and provide them with resources to obtain preliminary data to inform future cancer equity research in Indian Country (Pilot Grant Program); and 4) Develop infrastructure to support equitable engagement of Tribal partners and Indigenous Frameworks in cancer research.
Centering community voices in partnered mixed methods approaches to addressing health disparities with diverse communities
Meaningful partnerships between community and academic/public health co-researchers are needed to address community mental health, wellbeing, and health disparities. Partnerships should center the strengths, needs, and interests of communities on the communities’ terms while building relationships on trust and shared power.
UW researchers in partnership with the Community Health Board Coalition (CHBC) have developed an initial draft of a Community-Centered Approaches to Research and Evaluation (CCARE) Toolkit to guide academic, public health, and community researchers in partnering to act on emerging community data during times of crisis and beyond. As a part of this work, we are striving to better understand and support community health priorities.
Willow Study
The goal of this study is to understand the impact of stigma on mental health and recovery from trauma in different parts of the country.
Needs Assessment for Supporting Technology use and Harm Reduction (STaHR Study)
The proposed study entails a needs assessment to develop a program for Supporting Technology use and Harm Reduction (STaHR) among HF residents with lived experience of homelessness and substance use. This study will qualitatively explore HF residents’ technology literacy as well as their perspectives on barriers and facilitators to the use of technology, broadly, and for harm-reduction service provision. Then, with a community advisory board (CAB) made up of HF residents, staff, and management, we will inform and provide recommendations to HF management and leadership ways to improve HF resident technology use and engagement with online harm-reduction services.
eHaRT-A: adapting an in-person harm reduction for alcohol intervention into a telehealth platform
The unprecedented global pandemic has highlighted the digital divide and limited access to alcohol-related treatments among marginalized communities, specifically individuals with lived experience of homelessness. In line with the NIAAA health initiative seeking to integrate technology-based interventions among vulnerable populations, this study directly addresses this mission by proposing innovative methods (i.e., user-centered design + a community based participatory research framework) to adapt an in-person harm reduction for alcohol (HaRT-A) intervention into a telehealth platform (eHaRT-A) that can then be tested and successfully implemented into low-barrier Housing First settings. As healthcare continues to move more services online, it is essential to understand ways to successfully adapt and implement rigorously tested telehealth treatment services for marginalized communities to ameliorate alcohol-related harms.
