The USC PhD Achievement Awards recognize six doctoral candidates, and their primary faculty advisor, from across the university, with exceptional academic profiles. Among the recipients for 2025 are PhD candidate Lucinda Adjesiwor and Associate Professor Julie Cederbaum of the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. Adjesiwor is recognized for her work focusing on the risks, protective factors and mechanisms through which adversity influences child and family well-being.

Sparked by her direct experience with children who were trafficked in Ghana, and the impact of systemic inequities on those of low-income and marginalized families, Adjesiwor aims her research toward childhood adversity, family stress and the impact of these two factors on vulnerable families. Her three-paper dissertation, supported by the Oakley Endowed Fellowship, uses the national home visitation data of Parents as Teachers to explore dimensions of stress and its influence on parent-young child interactions; the role of parental mental health in the relationship between family stress and parent-young child interactions; and disparities in service outcomes for different subgroups of families. 

“My goal is to test, integrate and extend the theory on stress and adversity, address disparities in service outcomes and uncover actionable intervention approaches to reduce the impact of stressors on parent-child interactions,” Adjesiwor said.

Using experience to make an impact

Prior to starting her PhD studies, Adjesiwor worked as a case manager and rehabilitation specialist for child welfare organizations in Ghana and the United States. 

“Those were my core,” Adjesiwor said. “I had direct practice with vulnerable families, low-income families and children who have experienced maltreatment.” 

Those experiences helped her understand how maltreatment, trauma and stress have different impacts on the lives of children and their families. It was this foundational work that propelled her into her doctoral studies, aspiring to better understand the impacts of stress on vulnerable families and how to best support these families to improve outcomes.

Adjesiwor began her research by joining intervention studies through Project Fatherhood at Children’s Institute in Los Angeles. Created in 1996, Project Fatherhood teaches fathers in Los Angeles County to be more loving, responsible parents and active participants in their children’s lives. Adjesiwor worked with her advisor, Cederbaum, who leads a team that collects primary data from community members and service providers to ascertain the benefits of prevention services on the overall community, including support and parenting education. 

“Lucinda is a dedicated knowledge seeker with a strong focus on strengthening families,” Cederbaum said. “Her clinical practice experience, along with her dedication to learning, have resulted in a thoughtful family researcher.”

Adjesiwor’s involvement with Project Fatherhood, and additional projects involving surveying and intervention research, provided an exceptional training ground for her focused work. In addition, she says that Cederbaum, whose scholarship centers around the impact of childhood adversity and family processes in the well-being of youth, provided her with the tools to think conceptually, find ways to apply theory to research, and apply evidence-based research to her work.

An eye on equity

In the first paper of her dissertation, Adjesiwor looks at different concepts of stress, including the identification of internal and external stressors and how those stressors affect families. She paid particular attention to evidence suggesting that once parents experience stress or trauma, the impact can become multi-generational. Her second paper then looks at the role of parental mental health in association with family stress and parent-child relationships.

For the third paper, Adjesiwor looks at disparities in service outcomes for different subgroups of families. As social justice is the core of her work, she focuses on health disparity and health equity. She sought to document whether interventions work the same way for low-income families as they do for families with low education and differing socioeconomic groups by race.

“We want to make sure that even if there are services or interventions supporting families that are vulnerable, they are working for families the same way, irrespective of their socioeconomic background,” Adjesiwor said. “We want to be sure there are equitable services.”

Throughout the course of her research, Adjesiwor verified that stressors come from inside and outside of the family system. 

“I’m talking about issues that are systemic, like economic factors, employment and housing,” Adjesiwor said. “So, in the long term, what factors can we put into place to support low-income and at-risk families to be able to have better outcomes?”

She also realized that parental mental health is a critical pathway through which parenting influences children and family outcomes. In order to have subsequent generational impact, there is a need to understand parental mental health and how to screen for families.

“The interesting thing is that while I was doing this work the U.S. Surgeon General released a report about parents’ stress and the need to pay attention to this issue because it is becoming a significant public health concern,” Adjesiwor said. 

That report was a validation for Adjesiwor and the research she was pursuing. It put a spotlight on the issue of stress for researchers and public health workers alike, and emphasized the critical need to provide mental health support for vulnerable families in order to break the multi-generational cycle and improve outcomes.

Gratitude for supportive environment

"I want to thank USC for giving me this award,” Adjesiwor said. “I feel very grateful and it's been incredibly humbling for my work to be recognized. Beyond that, I also feel that it is a reflection of the support I have received from my family, advisors, mentors, peers and the community.”

As an international student, Adjesiwor says it has been extremely important to her to be a part of a school that pays attention to diversity, and provides students with support to ensure they are excelling in terms of their well-being. USC Social Work has been a good place for her as a researcher, where innovation, social justice and collaboration are paramount. She credits Cederbaum with shaping her perspective as a researcher, as a result of her encouragement to contribute to peer-reviewed literature, and to think critically about emerging issues.

“Focused on understanding and strengthening our most vulnerable parents and children, Lucinda’s work is not just methodologically rigorous, but value-driven,” Cederbaum said. “I am so pleased and proud that she has been recognized with this award.”

Looking toward the future, Adjesiwor’s sights are set on securing an academic position. She hopes to instill her passion for the profession and desire to advance dignity, inclusivity and social justice in the next generation of social workers.

“I want to see a world where families are better supported, able to have better outcomes, able to find peace, resilience and support factors,” Adjesiwor said. “That we're able to make sure if children have experienced adversity it doesn't define who they become in the long term, but rather it becomes a stepping stone for them to have support. To be set up to come out of it a better person for themselves and for subsequent generations.”