Abstract: Value of Social Work Interventions in Healthcare: Current Research and Future Directions (Society for Social Work and Research 28th Annual Conference - Recentering & Democratizing Knowledge: The Next 30 Years of Social Work Science)

Schedule:

Friday, January 12, 2024

Monument, ML 4 (Marriott Marquis Washington DC)

* noted as presenting author

Teresa Moro, PhD, Assistant Professor, Rush University, IL

Liana Petruzzi, PhD, LCSW, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Texas at Austin, TX

Alyssa McFadden, MSW, Program Coordinator, Rush University, IL

Catherine Wilsnack, MSW, Doctoral Student, University of Texas at Austin, TX

Qi Chen, MSW, Doctoral students, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX

Dana Franceschini, AM, LCSW, Doctoral Student, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL

Ting Guan, PhD, Assistant Professor, Syracuse University

Krista Nelson, Program Manager, Cancer Support Services & Compassion, Providence Cancer Institute, OR

Shirley Otis-Green, Clinical Social Worker and Founder, Collaborative Caring,, CA

Barbara Jones, PhD, Associate Dean for Health Affairs, University Distinguished Teaching Professor, Associate Director of Social Sciences and Community Based Research, LIVESTRONG Cancer Institutes and Professor of Oncology, Population Health, and Psychiatry, University of Texas at Austin, Austin

Background and Purpose: Across health and community systems, social workers provide services in hospitals, out-patient primary and specialty care clinics, behavioral health settings, residential and nursing home settings, and substance use programs. Generally, social workers are members of interdisciplinary teams providing care for a variety of populations. Despite the prevalence of social work in healthcare settings, there is a dearth of research exploring what unique value they bring to these teams and information about where and how they are involved in providing care. In this presentation, we will discuss our findings about the type of research being conducted, where social workers in healthcare are situated, and what populations they are impacting. We will also discuss recommendations for future research directions.

Methods: Using Arksey and O'Malley’s methodology, our team of community and academic social workers conducted a Scoping Review to explore the value of social work interventions across healthcare settings. The team worked closely with a medical reference librarian to identify search terms and used Covidence to manage the search and article selection. Our inclusion criteria included: 1) social workers had to be explicitly identified as members of the care team; 2) value-based outcomes had to be included in the study results; 3) interventions had to occur in a healthcare facility which included inpatient and outpatient, behavioral health, residential, home-based, and public health settings; 4) the target population had to have at least one health condition; 5) the intervention was focused on at least one health condition; 6) articles had to be peer-reviewed publications on original work, i.e., opinion pieces, dissertations, and existing literature reviews were excluded from the full-text extraction; 7) interventions occurred in the United States; 8) articles were in English; and 9) articles were published between 1/2010-10/2021.

Results: A total of 7415 abstracts were identified and reviewed by at least 2 members of our team. Additionally, 629 full-text articles were reviewed and 416 were excluded from data extraction for the following reasons: 1) 57% (n=238) either did not have or explicitly identify a social worker as part of the care management team; 2) 15% (n=62) did not discuss value-based outcomes; 3) 14% (n=59) were not peer-reviewed articles; and 4) 14% (n=57) did not discuss an intervention, did not present outcomes, or did not occur in a healthcare facility in the United States. Of the 213 articles selected for data extraction, we obtained the following information: 1) study design; 2) patient populations; 3) study settings; and 4) whether the interventions are SW led or SW as a part of the team.

Conclusions and Implications: Social workers are integral members of healthcare teams, however, the research on their unique value is limited. One possible contributor is that social workers are not adequately identified in the literature, as a lack of identification was the primary reason for exclusion in this study. Thus, more research on the unique value of social work and measuring the efficacy of social worker interventions is critical.