The social work profession has strong historical roots in the concept of social justice—roots that are acknowledged and promoted within our professional associations and educational standards. For me, the concept of social justice has always been an important cornerstone of the work that I do in the field of maternal-child health. Within this field, my work focuses on understanding the who and what that define access to important resources that help promote healthy families and healthy child development. Often within this field, concerns are present with regards to community-based issues such as access to key resources like quality healthcare, nutritious foods, and safe, secure housing and the resulting, persistent disparities in behavioral health outcomes within poor families. Further concerns exist regarding the social forces that work to establish oppression and continue to limit access to protective and beneficial resources.

My passion for examining these issues propelled my desire to pursue further the idea of social justice, and the role that social workers play in promoting it across system levels. Driven by this passion, I collaborated with Doctoral Program Director Dr. Stephen Tripodi to formulate a discussion group designed to operationalize our understanding of social justice and to begin formulating a model for further integrating the concept into our doctoral program’s research and community outreach efforts.

While social justice is a concept often highlighted within social work programs, the term has been used differentially over time, and existing definitions vary greatly. This variation influences how social workers approach social justice issues, both within academia and in communities. Engaging doctoral students in these discussions is a key component of communicating and developing the social work profession’s commitment to social justice work, as we emerge as leaders and scholars in the field. We live in a time that perpetuates a power dichotomy between the advantaged and the disadvantaged. Discussion groups offer doctoral students the opportunity to reflect on justice-informed approaches to scholarship and allow us to consider how to utilize this approach in a way that will honor the historical roots of our profession to serve the disadvantaged and underserved.

The group met on Thursday, September 21, 2017, for its first discussion with the intention of gauging students’ foundational understandings and conceptualizations of social justice, and to identify ways in which we can use our research to promote social justice in our College and community. Discussion group participants worked collectively to begin defining social justice; debated the mechanisms through which social justice ideals and values are transmitted among new and emerging social workers; and discussed how we might use these ideas to guide the work that we do within the College of Social Work.

Participating doctoral students noted several important points including:

•    the importance of social work scholars taking a lead role in academic discussions of social justice, given their corresponding ethical values;

•    that for social work scholars to actively lead in the field of social justice literature, a simple, concise definition of the construct needs to be developed;

•    that social work scholars and practitioners must engage in active self-reflection to promote the ideals of social justice; and

•    schools of social work must continue inviting people from marginalized groups to “take a seat at the table” in an ongoing effort to promote diversity within the field.

Moving forward, the group aims to develop a logic model to help crystalize the goals and objectives of our workgroup, with the hope of identifying creative approaches to engaging our College and community in socially just research practices.