Stéphanie Wahab

Portland State University | PSU · School of Social Work

Trauma-informed care (TIC) has gained significant traction in social work over the last decade, becoming a key organizing principle despite a dearth of empirical evidence attesting to its effectiveness. Addressing this paradox, our scoping review examines TIC’s conceptualization and application in the field, exploring its theoretical underpinnings...

NICU clinicians strive to provide family-centered care and often encounter complex and ethical challenges. Emerging evidence suggests that NICU clinicians likely interact with families experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV). However, little research and training exists to guide NICU clinicians in their thinking and practice in the midst of IP...

This manuscript responds to recent directives in Texas that would define the facilitation or provision of gender-affirming medical treatment for minors as “child abuse.” Specifically, we focus on the use of these directives to widen the scope of mandatory reporting laws. We briefly discuss the politics of mandatory reporting and the strategic appro...

Mandatory reporting of child abuse is a part of the civil legal system that can activate a policy cascade disproportionately criminalizing racialized and marginalized communities. While social work scholarship has explored ways to increase provider compliance with mandatory reporting laws, there is a dearth of research focused on how social work ed...

Despite international social work commitments to social justice, human dignity, and individual worth, feminist social work remains silent on Palestine. Israeli settler colonial violence pushes us to revisit our responsibilities to stand against colonized militarism. We insist that collective liberation is a feminist ethical constant, a political bo...

Expediency, efficiency, and rapid production within compressed time frames represent markers for research and scholarship within the neoliberal academe. Scholars who wish to resist these practices of knowledge production have articulated the need for Slow scholarship—a slower pace to make room for thinking, creativity, and useful knowledge. While t...

Social work research, practice, and education have become increasingly constrained by the braided influences of neoliberalism, professionalization, and criminalization. Using concrete practice examples, this chapter proposes that principles of feminist research rooted in understandings of power as everywhere, dynamic, historic, and structural offer...

Social Justice and Social Work is a foundational course required for all social work students in the master’s of social work program at Portland State University. Although the course has long focused on interrupting oppressions including White supremacy, teaching the course during the fall of 2020 required a nimble dance between our familiar modes...

Secrecy and the use of "secret information" as capital in the hands of the state is mobilised by affective racialised machineries, cultivated on "security" grounds. Securitised secrecy is an assemblage of concealed operations juxtaposing various forms of invasions and dispossessions. It is a central strategy in the politico-economic life of the sta...

ABSTRACT Over the last decade we have witnessed increasingly critical appraisals of neoliberalism among social work researchers, educators, and practitioners across the globe. There is growing awareness that neoliberal ideology and its manifestation in institutional arrangements constitute major barriers to social, political and economic justice. H...

Domestic violence work typically happens within the confines of significant macro forces that shape most social work practice, including but not limited to neoliberalism, criminalization and professionalization. Using the concept of professional resistance, we discuss and present our case study research that sought to understand how these intersect...

In this editorial, we consider what climate action would mean for the social work profession. We first review some of the Green New Deal proposals in the United Kingdom, Canada, and in the United States that emerged in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. We then discuss scholarship from a growing contingent of scholars who outline environ...

The hackneyed accusation that critical modes of thinking in academia, represented by journals such as Affilia, are at once absurd and dangerous has resurfaced in recent months. The central claim against critical scholarship—whether feminist, queer, poststructural, or otherwise—has always been that it is subjective, political, biased, and thus inval...

Motivational interviewing (MI) continues to evolve and be disseminated for use with different social work target populations. It places high importance on the relationship between the practitioner and the client, utilizing very specific communication skills to enhance relationships and promote clients’ advocating for their own change. This chapter...

Islamophobia describes the racism, exploitation, and violence experienced by Arabs, individuals of Arab descent, and Muslims. Although social workers are meant to challenge social injustice, social work codes of ethics and the literature are without guidance for unlearning Islamophobia. Arguing that one’s ability to interrupt Islamophobia is streng...

Young people in statutory care and protection interact with social workers, who hold potential to provide a supportive adult role in their lives. Many however, run away at an early age and end up on the street trading sex for money or other favours. There is potential to improve outcomes for young people in care if the relationship between young pe...

Objective This study developed and tested a student-report measure of motivational interviewing (MI) teaching quality called the Evaluation of Motivational Interviewing Teaching (EMIT) scale. Method Social work students (N = 297) receiving course content on motivational interviewing completed the EMIT, and exploratory factor analysis investigated...

Social work practice with sex workers in New Zealand occurs within a context of decriminalization since the passing of the Prostitution Reform Act (PRA) in 2003. This article presents the findings of a qualitative study focused on social workers’ perceptions of sex work/ers, the PRA, and its influence on practice with individuals in the sex industr...

Edward Said's work on Orientalism gives meaning to social workers, particularly those interested in social work, which attends to issues of representation, power, privilege, and oppression. Both authors place Orientalism in context by examining social work discourse and practices associated with gender, anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia, Zionism, c...

This article details an autoethnography project of our odysseys into the pedagogy of unlearning racism. Our knowledge creation process forced us to re-envision both our locations in, and pedagogy of, anti-racism work, with particular attention to the challenges and dangers of teaching about, to, and from White privilege within social work. In the e...

This article focuses on design, training, and delivery of a culturally tailored, multi-faceted intervention that used motivational interviewing (MI) and case management to reduce depression severity among African American survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV). We present the details of the intervention and discuss its implementation as a mea...

Many involved in the feminist debates over sex work have polarized the construction of women in the sex industry as either victims of exploitation, or free agents who choose this work. This study examined the life circumstances of 30 women who worked as topless dancers to determine, how, if at all, the polarized debates reflect the realities of the...

Despite the congruence between critical feminist values and the cardinal values of the social work profession, feminist research in social work has lagged behind its feminist cousins in the social sciences, particularly in terms of critical uses of theory, reflexivity, and the troubling of binaries. This article presents as praxis our reflections a...

BACKGROUND Multi-faceted depression care programs based within the healthcare system have been found to be effective, but may not fully address the needs of African American Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) survivors, many of whom are not seeking depression care in healthcare settings. OBJECTIVES To develop and evaluate a multifaceted, community-bas...

Since the passing of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, anti-trafficking efforts have grown in funding, political strength, and popular-culture appeal in the United States and globally. Particularly influential in shaping anti-trafficking policy in the United States are anti-prostitution advocates who are primarily concerned with rehab...

There has been recent concern that many practices and programs erroneously claim to be strengths-based. In reaction some have called for researchers to make systematic comparisons to the tenets of strengths-based practice (SBP) before making the contention that an intervention is strengths-based. Motivational interviewing (MI) is an intervention wh...

Early-stage diagnosis of colorectal cancer is associated with high survival rates; screening prevalence, however, remains suboptimal. This study seeks to test the hypothesis that participants receiving telephone-based tailored education or motivational interviewing had higher colorectal cancer screening completion rates compared to usual care. Prim...

Suicide is a significant health problem, yet many questions regarding suicide remain unanswered. One of the most frequently asked questions is related to motive: "Why did that person complete suicide?" We explored motivations for completing suicide, especially with regard to cultural differences, by analyzing suicide notes written by Native America...

Purpose: Examine longitudinal changes in colon cancer-related beliefs and knowledge and their prediction of post-intervention screening behavior. Background: Early diagnosis of colorectal cancer (CRC) is associated with high survival, and studies on increasing screening rates focus on changing behavior through manipulating beliefs and knowledge....

Executive Summary In November 2010, the current human rights record of the United States was reviewed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. As part of this process, members of the U.N. made a series of recommendations toward improving human rights in the U.S. In recommendation #92.86, member state Uruguay called on the Obama Administration to...

Social work as an academic discipline has long included women and gender as central categories of analysis; the social work profession, started and maintained largely by women, has been home to several generations of feminists. Yet, social work is curiously and strikingly absent from broader multidisciplinary discussions of feminist research. This...

This article presents the process and findings of a review of the empirical research literature on exotic dance/dancers in the United States and Canada from 1970 to 2008. We present research methods represented in this sample, as well as the main purposes of these studies, the deployment of theory in exotic dance research, and the visibility of res...

We sought to understand how African American women's beliefs regarding depression and depression care are influenced by racism, violence, and social context. We conducted a focus group study using a community-based participatory research approach. Participants were low-income African American women with major depressive disorder and histories of vi...

Objective: This article focuses on design, training, and delivery of motivational interview (MI) in a longitudinal randomized controlled trial intended to assess the efficacy of two separate interventions designed to increase colorectal screening when compared to a usual care, control group. One intervention was a single-session, telephone-based M...

Cancer randomized clinical trial (RCT) participation is low, particularly among ethnic and racial minorities. Hispanic enrollment is far below their representation in the US population, yet their cancer burden is higher. Little is known from the patient perspective about factors which influence the decision to enroll in RCTs. We asked Spanish- and...

As social workers are increasingly collaborating with the criminal justice system through diversion programs to create and provide alternative approaches to working with legal offenders, practitioners and researchers must consider evaluating such projects. While there exist numerous prostitution diversion programs for both sex workers and clients o...

Suicide is a major public health problem for American Indians in the United States. Published studies indicate that American Indians experience the highest rate of suicide of all ethnic groups in the United States. This article synthesizes the epidemiology and risk factors associated with suicide among American Indians, barriers to research, preven...

This article discusses some findings of a qualitative evaluation of Salt Lake City’s Prostitution Diversion Project (conducted in 2003-2004) to expose some of the challenges and opportunities of mixed-theory projects. The findings focus specifically on project stakeholders’ recommendations for improving the program. Many of these recommendations ar...

• Summary: Motivational interviewing was proposed as an alternative model to direct persuasion for facilitating behavior change. Social work behavior change interventions have traditionally focused on increasing skills and reducing barriers. More recent recommendations tend to encourage practitioners to explore a broad range of issues, including bu...

Previous studies indicate that Native American women experience the highest rate of violence of any ethnic or racial group in the United States. This article addresses the prevalence of intimate partner violence and sexual assault among Native Americans. We present significant substantive and methodological issues that inform research on violence i...

Social work practice with women who exchange sex for material goods dates back to the beginnings of the social work profession in the settlements, benevolent societies, and charity organizations. This article presents the theoretical frameworks, methods and findings of a qualitative, participatory inquiry with six adult female sex workers in Seattl...

Many involved in the feminist debates over sex work have polarized the construction of women in the sex industry as either victims of exploitation, or free agents who choose this work. This study examined the life circumstances of 30 women who worked as toplesS dancers to determine, how, if at all, the polarized debates reflect the realities of the...

This article reflexively engages substantive, epistemological, methodological, and ethical issues that surfaced during a feminist, qualitative, and participatory research project with 6 adult female sex workers in Seattle, Washington. Given the intersubjective researcher-participant relationship within participatory forms of inquiry, personal and p...

Sex work and prostitution are the focus of debate among feminists. This article explores the long history of the debate on sex work and presents recommendations for a policy statement for the profession.

Sex work and prostitution are the focus of debate among feminists. This article explores the long history of the debate on sex work and presents recommendations for a policy statement for the profession.

This article describes the conceptual underpinnings, implementation, and participation rates of a twelve-month low-intensity primary care-based intervention to prevent depression relapse. The intervention was designed to address the inherent problems in delivery of effective maintenance treatment in a population based sample of primary care patient...

In 1993, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Assembly of Delegates passed a resolution directing the Assembly to adopt a policy statement on sex work. From Jane Addams to present day, social workers have worked with women in the sex industry. There is a continuum of experiences, research, and theories on sex work. From forced traffick...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1997 Social work practice with women who exchange sex for material goods dates back to the beginnings of the social work profession in the settlements, benevolent societies and charity organizations. In the early 1900s, Settlement leader, Jane Addams sought to abolish prostitution "the social evil", and re...