A classic public health parable goes like this: a family is fishing downstream in a river, and suddenly a drowning person comes floating by. They pull the person out of the water, but then another drowning person comes by. As they are pulling that person out of the water, another comes by. The family then […]
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The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) doesn’t go far enough
By Jane Maxwell The opioid overdose epidemic plaguing Texas and the nation includes two interrelated trends: a 15-year increase in deaths involving opioid prescription pain relievers, and a more recent surge in heroin overdose deaths. To help combat the epidemic, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act was recently introduced in the U. S. Senate. This […]
Recovery high schools can help combat the opioid epidemic
By Julie McElrath I have seen this trend from up close, first as the counselor at a drug and alcohol residential treatment center. I worked with adult heroin users with multiple relapses who, on average, had started used opioids at 15 years of age. Today, in my role as executive director of University High School, […]
Texas decided not to expand Medicaid: Who pays the price?
Health insurance coverage may elicit yawns from other people but it gets Cossy Hough fired up. She credits her 13 years working with Texas Medicaid for her conviction that social workers should understand the social justice implications of Medicaid expansion. What is the Affordable Care Act coverage gap? Due to a 2012 Supreme Court decision […]
How to prevent homelessness
When Mary Dodson, MSSW ’96, was a social work student, she was set on the clinical concentration. We talked with her about how she declined professor Cal Streeter’s suggestion to switch to the community and administrative leadership track, and how she ended up using macro skills many times during her twenty years in homeless services. […]
Criminalization is not the answer to homelessness
By Cal Steeter We are seeing a continuing, worrisome trend across the country: Cities are trying to address the problem of homelessness through ordinances that criminalize life-sustaining activities such as sleeping, eating and even sitting on the street, in parks, on the beach or other public spaces. This is wrong and does nothing to address […]
Should social workers care about gender-neutral language?
Shane Whalley (MSSW ’03) on why social workers should care about gender-neutral language
The DSM-5: What social workers need to know
Countless workshops and presentations on the Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) have garnered professors Beth Pomeroy and Cynthia Franklin a nickname: the DSM-5 Ninjas. We asked Pomeroy what social workers should know about the new manual, and this is what she shared: There are four new chapters: Trauma […]
Trauma and recovery
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an estimated 22.7 million Americans needed treatment for problems related to drug or alcohol abuse in 2013. Suzanne Bartholomew (MSSW ’11) is the manager for women’s program at The Arbor Treatment Center in Austin, TX. We talked […]
New modes of intervention for young people seeking recovery
By Lori Holleran Steiker Newspapers and magazines are full of stories of adolescent and young adults struggling with addiction. Stories of youth overdoses flood the media, the death rates for overdose in Americans aged 15 to 24 more than doubled from the early to mid-21st century nationwide. This trend serves as an ominous backdrop to the […]