The School of Social Work was well represented at Meeting the Mental Health Needs of Texans, a research conference presented by St. David’s Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research in Underserved Populations (St. David’s CHPR) at The University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing on March 27th.

The conference, which counted with the Center for Social Work Research among its co-sponsors, featured podium presentations by six experts renowned for their work in the areas of mental health, health disparities, and research-based interventions. Among the experts was Dr. Jane Maxwell, who delivered a presentation titled “Substance abuse trends: Old and new drugs.” Dr. King Davis, the School’s former Robert Lee Sutherland Chair in Mental Health and Social Policy, gave the closing address, “Mental health under the Affordable Care Act and the Congress.”

The daylong event also included poster presentations featuring research addressing a wide array of health promotion topics. School’s faculty and graduate students presented six of the forty-four posters:

  • Lynn Wallisch, together with Holly Bell, graduate student Eden Robles, Thomas Bohman, and Richard Spence presented “Moving back into the community: Experiences of a pilot program in relocating nursing facility residents with behavioral health disorders into the community”
  • Diana DiNitto collaborated with Gene Brooks in the poster “Correlates of substance dependence among people with blindness/visual impairment”
  • Graduate student Hyunwoo Yoon with Yuri Jang presented “Self-rated mental health in Korean American older adults: An examination from sociocultural context”
  • Namkee Choi with graduate students Leslie Sirrianni and Mary Lynn Marinucci presented “Acceptance of home-based tele health problem-solving therapy for depressed, low-income homebound older adults: Qualitative interviews with the participants and aging service case managers”
  • Graduate student Sok An with Namkee Choi presented “Computer skills training need to facilitate low-income homebound older adults’ participation in online chronic disease self-management program and training self-efficacy”
  • Graduate student Tara Powell presented “The journey of hope: A universal-school based psychosocial program for children who have experienced a natural disaster”