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News Archive

  • A plummeting birthrate and scarcity of resources have left Cuba facing a demographic dilemma.

  • People often draw on their faith as a source of hope and strength in the face of life’s challenges. Yet providers are often wary of using spirituality in the treatment of serious mental health issues, fearing it violates the separation of church and state and will lead to proselytizing or alienate patients who are not religious. Others even regard spiritual beliefs as potential psychiatric symptoms.

  • How can social workers, nurses and other clinicians ensure that the tools and techniques they use to treat clients are effective and not causing harm?

    Leading scholars are tackling that issue in a series of conferences this year organized by the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work in collaboration with other partners. Topics include synthesizing findings from previous studies, adapting interventions for new contexts and developing rigorous, evidence-based practices in social work and nursing.

  • Jessica Saba wakes up in the middle of the summer of 2011 and knows she is in harsh conditions.

    There is trash all around, spilled water, overcrowded living spaces and barefoot children running between alleys. The unemployment rate is 43 percent. There are huge concrete walls about 26 feet tall with watchtowers on the tops. The only opening in the wall is for military vehicles and tanks to pass through.

  • About 10 percent of the world’s population, or 767 million people, lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2013. A vast majority of the poor live in rural areas, are poorly educated, mostly employed in the agricultural sector, and more than half are under 18 years of age. And while incomes increased from 2014 to 2015, the 2015 poverty rate was 1.0 percentage point higher than in 2007, the year before the most recent recession.

  • A group of volunteers, most wearing cardinal and gold, entered the orientation room at Newton Police Station in South Los Angeles to find yellow vests, maps, flashlights and clipboards waiting for them. These were the tools they would use as they fanned out in the surrounding neighborhood, combing the streets, alleys, parking lots and other areas where a person might find sleep for the night because they have no permanent home.

  • President Trump promises to eliminate gun-free school zones. Many think he will likely sign an executive order soon.

    Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) also recently introduced a bill, which would repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act. Massie commented about the zones, “They do not and cannot prevent criminals or the mentally ill from committing acts of violence. But they often prevent victims of such violence from protecting themselves.”

  • Alzheimer’s disease in African Americans is approaching a public health crisis. Evidence suggests African Americans are at greater risk for developing Alzheimer’s dementia than any other group in the United States. Research in this community lags, however, and recruiting African Americans for clinical trials remains a struggle. USC researchers hope a new texting campaign will change some minds.

  • Our school has a mandate in these moments of national upheaval to reaffirm our values and work even more passionately to achieve the aims we serve as a profession.

    That is the purpose of this letter. I speak for both our social work and nursing departments.

    In social work and nursing, the linchpin of our values is social justice for all.

    Our vigilance and concern for equity has been central to this school since its earliest inception and stands as a hallmark today.

  • Earth’s increasingly deadly and destructive climate is prompting social work leaders to focus the profession’s attention on one of humanity’s most pressing issues: environmental change.

    Typhoons are hitting the South Pacific with greater severity and regularity. Hurricane Katrina prompted the largest forced migration of Americans since the Civil War. Civil conflicts and instability in the Middle East and Africa are being linked to climate change and its socioecological effects.