SW 550 Social Work Practice in Health Care

This course focuses on health social work at the nexus of practice and policy. It provides students with core advanced year knowledge applicable to a wide range of settings, populations and fields of practice within the broader domain of health social work. Most social workers in health care provide clinical/direct practice services to individuals, families, groups and communities, often in collaboration with interdisciplinary teams, and continuously informed by complex organizational and policy contexts. Social workers in health also directly engage in work at the organizational and policy levels, since so many of the intractable issues individuals, families and groups encounter in U.S. health care systems (e.g., lack of access to quality care; lack of insurance coverage; lack of affordable medications; lack of coordination of care; disparities in health outcomes by race, ethnicity, and gender; lack of cultural sensitivity/ competence in the delivery of care) demand coordinated organizational, public health and policy solutions.