The social work profession embodies a strong commitment to promoting social justice initiatives through both practice and research.  In 2016, the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare launched the Twelve Grand Challenges of Social Work to outline the profession’s vision for creating an equitable and socially just society.  Florida State University’s College of Social Work will be among the leaders in one Grand Challenge: Smart Decarceration; led by Dr. Carrie Pettus-Davis and Dr. Matthew Epperson (University of Chicago). 

On February 28, 2018, the College of Social Work had the privilege of hosting a visit from Dr. Jeff Jenson of the University of Denver.  Dr. Jenson chairs the Coalition for the Promotion of Behavioral Health which promotes the Social Work Grand Challenge of Ensuring Healthy Development for All Youth by unleashing the power of prevention.  Dr. Jenson reviewed an unsettling history of preventative programming within behavioral health.  Very few prevention programs have been empirically supported; resulting in Dr. Jenson’s diagnosis of previous prevention programming as untested good ideas can sometimes make things worse! 

Dr. Jenson presented the paradigm-shift of risk-focused prevention, adopted from a public-health approach.  Thus, intervening to stop a problem before it happens by addressing its risk factors.  Etiological research has identified risk and protective factors of behavioral health issues as potential targets for intervention. For youth, these risk factors occur at the individual, family, school, and community level. 

Moving forward, the Coalition for the Promotion of Behavioral Health has identified three main initiatives to unleash the power of prevention: collaboration with states to enhance infrastructure and community-level prevention capacity, the promotion of healthy parenting programs through primary care, and the enhancement of a prevention workforce through pedagogical interventions.  

Through these initiatives, the Grand Challenge of Ensuring Health Development for All Youth hopes to reduce the incidence and prevalence of behavioral health issues in youth by 20% in a decade and reduce racial and economic health disparities in behavioral health by 20% in a decade.  By unleashing the power of prevention, the Coalition for the Promotion of Behavioral Health hopes to ensure the behavioral health of youth through thoughtful advances in prevention research.