Abigail M Ross

• MSW MPH PhD
• Associate Professor at University of Pennsylvania

A formal evaluation of social work literature on the topic of gendered racism has yet to be undertaken. Accordingly, authors present a scoping review of peer-reviewed social work literature on gendered racism. Guided by Arksey and O’Malley’s scoping review framework, databases were searched for peer-reviewed journal articles including the term “gen...

Noting the importance of food assistance programs to low income families in New York City (NYC), the research questions for the present study were: (1) What are the facilitators and barriers to social service utilization for food pantry clients in the South Bronx?, and (2) Does receiving food pantry services serve as a point of entry for social ser...

Social workers are an integral part of the U.S. healthcare system, yet specific contributions of social work to health and cost-containment outcomes is sparse. This scoping review describes and evaluates the state of the evidence on how social work interventions impact health and economic outcomes since the passage of the Patient Protection and Aff...

Acculturating to the Active Duty military lifestyle can be challenging yet rewarding. Using acculturation theory as a lens, this qualitative study explored experiences of women who transitioned into Active Duty culture through marrying a male service member. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected via online survey from women married to me...

Purpose Family violence, encompassing intimate partner violence (IPV) and child maltreatment (CM), is a considerable public health issue affecting a large subset of the U.S. population. Military families may be exposed to unique risk factors for experiencing family violence. Interventions to address family violence that are specific to military and...

Introduction Home visitor well-being is integral to delivering effective home visiting services and a core component of successful home visiting program implementation. While burnout (BO), compassion fatigue (CF), and compassion satisfaction (CS) have been studied extensively in physicians, nurses, and other health providers, little is known about...

Using a community-based participatory research approach, we conducted a survey of 218 food pantry recipients in the south Bronx to determine predictors of food insecurity and childhood hunger. In adjusted multiple regression models, statistically significant risk factors for food insecurity included: having one or more children and not having healt...

Social work is an essential workforce integral to the United States’ public health infrastructure and response to COVID-19. To understand stressors among frontline social workers during COVID-19, a cross-sectional study of U.S-based social workers (N = 1,407) in health settings was collected (in June through August 2020). Differences in outcome dom...

COVID-19 has continued to bring devastation to children and families, even 1 year into the pandemic. The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement has also led to renewed attention to systemic racism in the United States and awareness of how the pandemic has further exacerbated health inequities that disproportionately affect communities of color. Pe...

Although burnout has been increasingly well studied among medical (nurses, physicians, residents) and mental health providers (psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers), there continues to be a lack of attention on the well‐being of community‐based providers, such as Community Health Workers (CHWs), within the United States. Using cross‐section...

Social workers have engaged in promotive, preventive, and intervention work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that social workers are disproportionately women, and the essential nature of practice during the pandemic, how social workers experience caretaking and financial stressors warrants examination. Data are drawn from a larger cross-sect...

The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought widespread devastation across the United States, exacerbating existing health inequities rooted in the social determinants of health. Social work is the key workforce tasked with providing social care in healthcare settings. In September 2019, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine released a...

To understand ED providers’ perspective on how to best care for individuals who present to US emergency departments (EDs) following self-injurious behavior, purposive recruitment identified nursing directors, medical directors, and social workers (n = 34) for telephone interviews from 17 EDs. Responses and probes to “What is the single most importa...

Social work has been a part of the essential workforce historically and throughout the COVID‐19 pandemic, yet lack recognition. This work explores the experiences and invisibility of social workers within the pandemic response. Data are drawn from a large cross‐sectional survey of US‐based social worker from June to August of 2020. A summative cont...

In this article, we critically engage the “dual pandemics” framing of this special issue. We first consider the key assumptions of this popular frame, specifically the conceptualization of racism as a pandemic, and examine limitations of medicalizing racism. We follow with an introduction of the term syndemic, coined by public health scholar Merril...

Previous research indicates that one’s identity relates to one’s use of specific coping strategies. Exploring the relationship between self and coping in military wives is crucial to understanding how they manage military lifestyle-related stressors. The researchers hypothesized that identity status, self-concept clarity, self-monitoring, mastery,...

Military families are exposed to a unique constellation of risk factors, which may impact maltreatment outcomes. The present study examined prospective relationships between demographic, health, birth-related, and military-specific risk factors identified prior to a child’s birth on their risk for maltreatment in the first two years of life. Data f...

Suicidal ideation and attempts are stigmatized behaviors, but little is known about the correlates of stigma among young adults with suicidal ideation. Data from the Healthy Minds Study (N = 14,147) were used to test the associations between suicidal ideation and indicators of emotional state nondisclosure, stereotype awareness, and stereotype agre...

OBJECTIVE To describe the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated practice shifts on consultation and referral patterns of an intimate partner violence (IPV) program at a large, urban children’s hospital. METHODS Secondary data analyses examined COVID-19-related variations in patterns of consultations and referrals in the 11 months prior t...

Continued provision of essential services is critical to maintaining society's functioning during a crisis. During COVID-19, lockdowns and restrictions designed to preserve the public's health forced an examination of what it means to be an essential worker. Drawing from thematic analyses of focus group data from 55 social workers employed in a lar...

Turnover in community mental health clinics threaten the delivery of quality behavioral health services; recovery orientation has been shown to be associated with lower levels of burnout but its relationship with actual turnover has not yet been examined. This study aimed to examine the relationship between provider perceptions of recovery orientat...

While social workers have served as frontline workers responding to the needs of vulnerable populations during COVID-19 pandemic, little is known about how social work professionals themselves have been impacted. This article explored the impact of COVID-19 on social work professionals’ mental health, physical health, and access to personal protect...

The current political climate and reversals of gains made during the Civil Rights Movement underscore the urgent need for preparing emerging social workers to effectively address white supremacy in social work practice. Antiracism education in social work aims to ensure competent antiracist social work practice towards the goal of eradicating white...

The objective of this study was to examine end-user opinions on electronic health record (EHR) modifications related to social work documentation of psychosocial acuity and provision of social care. Content analysis was used to examine end-user opinions (n = 42; 20% of a social work department employed in a large, urban, pediatric hospital) about w...

Emotional dysregulation leading to clinically significant anger and aggression is a common and substantial concern for youth and their families. While psychotropic medications and cognitive behavioral therapies can be effective, these modalities suffer from drawbacks such as significant side effects, high rates of attrition, and lack of real-world...

Despite intersectionality’s relevance to social work, scholars have raised concerns that its misguided applications place it “in danger of being co-opted, depoliticized, and diluted.” This scoping review examined the use of intersectionality in empirical social work research, specific to the extent, contexts, and degree of responsibility with which...

Background: Delivering person-centered care is a key component of health care reform. Despite widespread endorsement, medical and behavioral health settings struggle to specify and measure person-centered care objectively. This study presents the validity and reliability of the Person-Centered Care Planning Assessment Measure (PCCP-AM), an objectiv...

Purpose The aim of this study was to establish content validity of a developmentally based assessment tool of readiness for medical independence for specialty providers. Design and methods The validation process used expert panel evaluation to assess the items believed to measure the desired content in the nine age-based scales within the RAISE (R...

Study objective: We explored emergency department clinical leaders' views on providing emergency mental health services to pediatric and geriatric patients with suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. Methods: We conducted semistructured interviews with a total of 34 nursing directors, medical directors, and behavioral health managers at 17 gene...

Within the United States, there is an absence of a national community health worker (CHW) program. There is substantial regional and state-based variability in the population served by CHWs, their disease focus, and availability of training, supervision, and other supports. This article seeks to respond to the call in the literature to work collabo...

Objective A suicide attempt is the most potent predictor of future suicidal behavior, yet little is known about how to manage and respond to reports of attempt histories in hospitalized medical patients. This study aims to describe the prevalence and characteristics of pediatric and adult medical inpatients who report a past suicide attempt. Metho...

While Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) are an important mechanism used to document patient information and service provision, most interfaces prioritize collection of information required for medical billing purposes, rather than complexities of behavioral and social service needs. An emphasis on encounter data renders it challenging for social wo...

Child abuse and neglect (CAN) is a significant and growing public health problem, yet public health approaches to eliminating CAN have not been widely embraced in the United States or in social work education. Public health approaches require a large multidisciplinary infrastructure to scale evidence-based primary prevention strategies through mult...

The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought widespread devastation upon children and families across the United States, widening existing health disparities and inequities that disproportionately affect communities of color. In health care settings specifically, social work is the key workforce tasked with responding to patient and family psychosocial needs,...

Purpose: Medically ill youth are at increased risk for suicide. For convenience, hospitals may screen for suicide risk using depression screening instruments, though this practice might not be adequate to detect those at risk for suicide. This study aims to determine whether depression screening can detect suicide risk in pediatric medical inpatie...

COVID-19 has served to exacerbate existing health disparities and inequities, most-if not all-of which can be traced to the social determinants of health (SDOH) that affect specific populations and communities. Essential to health and health systems long before, community health workers are experts in addressing SDOH in community-based settings; ho...

Introduction Every year, approximately 500 000 patients in the United States present to emergency departments for treatment after an episode of self-harm. Evidence-based practices such as designing safer ED environments, safety planning, and discharge planning are effective for improving the care of these patients but are not always implemented wit...

The adverse effects of deployment‐related stress (DRS) on military service members, spouses, and children are well documented. Findings from a recent Consensus Report on Military Families by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (2019) underscore the priority of gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the diversity of t...

Objective Validate the Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ) with youth in outpatient specialty and primary care clinics. Method This is a cross sectional instrument validation study assessing the validity of the ASQ with respect to the standard criterion, Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire (SIQ/SIQ Jr.). The sample included 515 English speaking yout...

Background: Suicide is the second leading cause of death among adolescents; age-adjusted suicide rate increased 30% from 2000-2016. Medical illnesses are a known risk factor for suicide, establishing medical settings as a key venue for detecting suicide risk. Nurses have the potential to play a critical role in early detection of medically ill pati...

Objectives: To validate the use of a brief suicide risk screening tool, the Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ) instrument, in pediatric inpatient medical and surgical settings. Methods: Pediatric patients (10-21 years) hospitalized on inpatient medical and surgical units were recruited through convenience sampling for participation in a cross...

Since the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) first emerged in December 2019, there have been unprecedented efforts worldwide to contain and mitigate the rapid spread of the virus through evidence-based public health measures. As a component of pandemic response in the United States, efforts to develop, launch, and scale-up contact tracing initiat...

The seminal Consensus Study by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine released in September 2019 describes the benefits of integrating health and social care service delivery, underscoring the central role of social determinants of health (SDOH) in health outcomes. Although the report’s focus on the integration of health and s...

The post-9/11 conflicts have taken a substantial toll on military families. Although positive effects of reintegration-focused programs are well-documented for service members, less is known about military spouses who are parents of young children. This article examines the outcomes of a formal reflective parenting program developed for military fa...

Spouses of National Guard/Reserve (NG/R) military service members cope with deployment-related stressors (DRS) that may contribute to increased psychological distress. Research indicates that higher levels of social support are associated with reduced depression and anxiety in military spouses, but longitudinal relationships have not yet been exami...

Contemporary service members and their partners have adapted their coparenting to respond to the specific transitions and disruptions associated with wartime deployment cycles and evolving child development. This qualitative study draws upon interviews with service member and home front parents of very young children to characterize their coparenti...

This longitudinal mixed-methods study explored variation in organizational readiness for change and leadership behavior across seven organizations during a 12-month training initiative in person-centered care planning. Quantitative data was used to examine trajectories of organizational readiness for change and leadership behavior over time and qua...

This mixed-methods study examined providers’ experiences using a structured developmentally sensitive tool to assess transition readiness for youth with special health-care needs moving from pediatric to adult care. Twenty-eight health-care providers from three pediatric specialty clinics reported their experiences using the tool by surveys and sem...

Introduced in 2013 by the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, the Grand Challenges for Social Work (GCSW) implicitly embrace a public health perspective. However, the lack of a specific overarching conceptual framework creates a challenge for moving the GCSW from concept to practice. In this article, authors propose that public heal...

Background: Care coordination (CC) is integral to improving health care quality. Research on CC by health care social workers (HSWs) in pediatric health care settings is limited. This paper aims to operationalize and quantify CC functions fulfilled by HSWs in one large urban pediatric hospital. Methods: Twenty-three discrete CC tasks across four ca...

In recent years, health researchers and practitioners have turned to intersectional approaches to practice, policy analysis, and the conduct of research to better understand the etiology of persistent and pervasive population-level inequities in healthcare access and health outcomes. This chapter begins with a brief historical overview of intersect...

Background: Efforts to reduce expensive health service utilization, contain costs, improve health outcomes, and address the social determinants of health require research that demonstrates the economic value of health services in population health across a variety of settings. Social workers are an integral part of the US health care system, yet t...

Objective: In current practice, treatment as usual (TAU) for suicidal adolescents includes evaluation, with little or no intervention provided in the emergency department (ED), and disposition, usually to an inpatient psychiatry unit. The family-based crisis intervention (FBCI) is an emergency psychiatry intervention designed to sufficiently stabi...

Objective: Parenting through the deployment cycle presents unique stressors for military families. To date, few evidence-based and military-specific parenting programs are available to support parenting through cycles of deployment separation and reintegration, especially for National Guard/Reserve members. The purpose of this research was to test...

Interconnectedness through technology presents both challenges and opportunities for suicide prevention and intervention with adolescents and families. The time following discharge from acute care facilities represents a critical period of suicide risk for adolescents, which could be buffered by a technological intervention they could use post-disc...

Introduction: Extended conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have resulted in an unprecedented number of deployments. Stage models characterizing the deployment cycle have focused primarily on individual experiences of deployment separation (e.g., emotional cycle; Logan, 1987). One recently evolved framework focuses on experiences of parenting (DeVoe &...

Introduction. Since October 2001, over 2 million U.S. troops, approximately 42% of whom are parents have been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq (Committee on Needs of Military Personnel, 2011). Children ages birth to 5 comprise the largest demographic group of military-connected children (42%) and may be at elevated risk for child maltreatment (Rent...

Introduction: Substantial evidence suggesting that medical inpatients, especially children and adolescents, are at increased risk for suicide (Furnetto & Stefanello, 2011; Qin et al, 2012) Early detection of patients at risk is a critical prevention strategy. Although results of previous studies indicate that the majority of pediatric patients supp...

This study used qualitative methods and quantitative statistical analyses to examine whether race and gender are associated with reasons for which adults perceive a situation or object as fearful. The sample consists of 197 African American and White adults (ages 18–85) recruited through a convenience sample and community sources in the Midwest. A...

For more than a decade, the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have placed tremendous and cumulative strain on U.S. military personnel and their families. The high operational tempo, length, and number of deployments-and greater in-theater exposure to threat-have resulted in well-documented psychological health concerns among service members and vet...

Background and Purpose: Over 2 million children have experienced parental deployment to the wars in Afghanistan (OEF) and Iraq (OIF/OND). Very young children, age birth to five years, represent 40% of those affected. Over 42% of the Total Forces are parents. Although parent mental health problems have been linked to lower levels of child well-being...

This article describes 1 large urban pediatric hospital's partnership with a university to provide suicide assessment and management training within its social work department. Social work administrators conducted a department-wide needs assessment and implemented a 2-session suicide assessment training program and evaluation. Respondents (97.8%) i...

Over two million children have experienced at least one parental deployment in the post-September 11th wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Young children (age birth to 5 years) are disproportionately represented in military families. Although research identifying the effects of deployment on children of all ages is beginning to emerge, there has been lit...

Adolescent suicide is a significant public health problem. A number of studies indicate dramatic increases in adolescent suicide rates (CDC, 2007, 2008, CDCP, 1998, 2008). According to the WHO, youth are currently the group at highest risk of suicide in one third of all countries (developed and developing). In 2007, suicide was the third leading ca...

Adolescent suicide is on the rise and treatment resources are scarce. Adolescents with suicidal behavior often are evaluated in the Emergency Department (ED), where the default treatment recommendation traditionally has been admission to an inpatient psychiatric unit. Emergency Medicine increasingly provides intervention in the ED with the goal of...

Purpose: Suicide is the third leading cause of death of youth between the ages of 10 and 24 in the US (CDC, 2009b). Despite an abundance of published conceptual discussions of suicide risk and protective factors, few evidenced-based suicide interventions exist (NREPP, 2012). Only two (Asarnow, Baraff, Berk et al., 2011; Rotheram-Borus, Piacentini...

Dual-degree programs in public health and social work continue to proliferate. In the last twenty years, the number of programs appears to have doubled, reflecting a growing interest in trans-disciplinary approaches to prevention and intervention in complex social health problems. Each year, an unidentified number of MSW/MPH graduates enter the wor...

Background: Military families are significantly affected by the deployment cycle and the veteran's mental health status at reintegration. The current generation of veterans is reluctant to seek services due to concerns about confidentiality, stigma, career implications, and insurance coverage limitations. National Guard and Reserve (NG/R) families...

Background: Suicide is a significant public health problem. The emergency department (ED) often serves as a portal to the mental health system for the majority of suicidal adolescents. The prevailing model of care for psychiatric patients in the ED is evaluation and disposition, with little or no treatment provided at the time of the visit. Aims: T...

Background: Recent studies of injection drug users (IDUs) in Puerto Rico indicate widespread use of xylazine (horse anesthesia) mixed with heroin and cocaine. This study describes use of xylazine/mix and HIV risk behaviors. Methods: Data from 374 Puerto Rican IDUs was gathered through Spanish in-person interviews. Bi-variate and multivariable analy...

Group cognitive behavioral treatments (GCBTs) for hoarding have produced modest benefits. The current study examined whether the outcomes of a specialized GCBT improve upon bibliotherapy (BIB) for hoarding, as part of a stepped care model. We also explored whether additional home assistance enhanced GCBT outcomes. Hoarding patients (n = 38) were ra...

In this article, we describe the methodology broadly known as community-based participatory research (CBPR) and identify its relevance to social work intervention research with families serving in Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF). Since the inception of OEF/OIF, much has been written about low rates of service utilizatio...

The prevailing model of care for psychiatric patients in the emergency room (ER) is evaluation and disposition, with little or no treatment provided. This article describes the results of a pilot study of a family-based crisis intervention (FBCI) for suicidal adolescents and their families in a large, urban pediatric ER. FBCI is an intervention des...

Parents of dependent children comprise approximately 42% of Active Duty and National Guard/Reserve military members serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom. Recent estimates indicate that more than two million children have experienced parental deployment since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. This article seeks to...

Purpose: The cumulative effects of combat-related experiences on service members who've participated in recent conflicts in Afghanistan (OEF) or Iraq (OIF) and their families continue to be an area of intense inquiry for mental health and social work scholars (e.g. Chandra et al., 2010). More recently, research has begun to explore the impact of de...

Purpose: For many couples, the birth of an infant and early parenting are some of the most exciting and growth-promoting of life's events (Cowan & Cowan, 1993). However, women who deliver babies while their partners are deployed to a war zone and experience the first weeks and months of infancy alone often perceive the event as stressful and potent...

Young children are disproportionately represented among families with at least one parent who has been deployed in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) or Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The cumulative effects of combat-related experiences on service members continue to be an area of intense inquiry. More recently, research has begun to explore the impa...

Approximately 2 million children have been affected by parental deployment to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (OEF/OIF), 40% of them younger than five years old (DOD, 2008). While military families have shown remarkable resilience throughout these conflicts (Elder & Clipp, 2006), very young children are particularly vulnerable to deployment separa...

Patients who present to the emergency department (ED) and require psychiatric hospitalization may wait in the ED or be admitted to a medical service because there are no available inpatient psychiatric beds. These patients are psychiatric "boarders." This study describes the extent of the boarder problem in a large, urban pediatric ED, compares cha...

Anxiety disorders cause severe impairment and disability with respect to an individual’s quality of life and social functioning, especially when untreated (Chavira, Stein, Bailey, & Stein, 2004a). Given the high prevalence of anxiety disorders, it is critical that the resulting impairment is understood, addressed, and prevented when possible. Estim...

The high operational tempo and the length of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have required more frequent and less predictable deployment rotations, higher exposure to combat among those deployed, and greater reliance on National Guard/Reserves than in any previous US conflicts. While military families and their service branches have shown remarkab...

Current war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have required more frequent and less predictable deployment rotations, along with greater reliance on National Guard/Reserve units (NGR), than any previous US conflict. Repeated, lengthy deployments result in increased child attachment disturbances, as well as depression, anxiety, and increased behavio...

This study reports on the development and initial psychometric properties of the Children's Saving Inventory (CSI), a parent-rated measure designed to assess child hoarding behaviors. Subjects included 123 children and adolescents diagnosed with primary Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and their parents. Trained clinicians administered the Child...

Young children (birth through 5 years of age) are disproportionately represented in U.S. military families with a deployed parent. Because of their developmental capacity to deal with prolonged separation, young children can be especially vulnerable to stressors of parental deployment. Despite the resiliency of many military families, this type of...

Background and Purpose: The strains of the deployment cycle for families of those serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom (OIF/OEF) are only beginning to be addressed. While many service members and families have shown remarkable resilience in the face of military demands (Elder & Clipp, 2006), little research has been done on...

Young children are disproportionately represented among families with at least one parent who has been deployed in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) or Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). The cumulative effects of combat-related experiences on service members have been well-documented and continue to be an area of intense inquiry. By contrast, the strain...

Suicide is a significant public health problem. Recent reports rank suicide as the 11th leading cause of death in the U.S. general population (Center for Disease Control, 2007) and the 3rd leading cause of death among youth/young adults (National Center for Health Statistics, 2007). Social workers are the leading providers of mental health treatm...