Henrika McCoy, PhD

Dr. Henrika McCoy is the Ruby Lee Piester Centennial Fellow in Services to Children and Families and Associate Professor at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work.

She received her Ph.D. from the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis, her Master of Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania, and her Master of Jurisprudence from Loyola University Chicago School of Law. She also earned her Bachelor of Arts in African and African American Studies and Sociology from Washington University in St. Louis.

Dr. McCoy conducts her research in partnership with community members/experts and predominately focuses her efforts in two areas. First, she examines how mental health issues precipitate the involvement of Black boys into the juvenile legal system while also exploring how those mental health issues are identified and their related experiences and outcomes. Second, she focuses on better identifying and understanding the violent victimization experiences of young Black males ages 18 to 24. Beyond those areas, her overarching scholarship extends to exploring the impact of structural and systemic racism on Black persons in America.

She has served as a PI for studies funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Administration on Children Youth and Families, and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). She currently serves as a Co-Investigator for the NIJ-funded Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Social Development Study (ABCD-SD) which measures delinquency and victimization at five sites of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study.

Dr. McCoy currently serves on the editorial boards of Child and Adolescent Social Work and Children and Youth Services Review. She has served as a Director-at-Large for the Society for Social Work and Research and as Co-Chair of the Division on People of Color and Crime for the American Society of Criminology. She is a Program Co-Chair for the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences 2024 Annual Conference.

OpEds 

May 9, 2022 Diversity statements: The good, the bad and the ugly  

March 14, 2022 Questions you should ask yourself regarding your role in institutional racism   

January 21, 2022 Yes, your university perpetuates racism against BAME academics: what can you do?  

March 15, 2021 Minority academics face dual pandemics of COVID19 and racism  

August 2, 2020 So say we all…The BSG guide to Election 2020 

June 12, 2020 The life of a Black academic: Tired and terrorized  

April 1, 2020 Gun violence in urban communities must get the same attention as suburban school shootings  

March 26, 2020 Jails and prisons could become coronavirus disaster  

Research 

SURVIVE: Suburban, Urban, Rural Violence: Investigating Victim Experiences 

3/40 Blueprint: Creating the Blueprint to Reduce LGBTQ Youth Homelessness