Starting my Doctor of Social Work Degree & Reducing the Feedback Loop

Today was the first day of DSW orientation for what is going to be the second cohort of students (Class of 2023!) for the UB School of Social Work’s Doctor of Social Work Program in Social Welfare & Implementation Science. A forward thinking program working to bridge the gap between agencies and universities in order to reduce the time between when research is conducted and when research is implemented in the field.

It was wonderful to meet my colleagues virtually (while I would have loved to have met them IRL, social distancing and safety remain paramount as we continue to battle COVID-19). I live in University Heights and work one minute from my house in the same zip-code on the East Side. University Heights and my workplace share a zip-code of 14215. Presently, and throughout the pandemic, the 14215 has had some of the highest infection rates in the City of Buffalo.

I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that a few capstone projects are likely going to be on implementing interventions during pandemics. I couldn’t help but reflect on what it means to be starting now, in this context, in this background, in this zip-code, in this 2020 reality of the United States.

So what is my DSW, what exactly am I studying, and why?

Currently it’s estimated that it takes around ten years for completed research to be implemented in the field. This means that once initial research has hit the ground running (…ten years later…) that a feedback loop has to be created between the universities and researchers who can study it further and the agencies who are implementing it.

The researchers need to find out if their interventions are effective, if they’re applicable to other groups (have they only been studied on one kind of group, or one kind of condition?), and what (if any) changes can, or need to be made for them to be transferable…and then we wait even longer for more research to be done, that research to be disseminated back to the field and implemented again, and feedback sent back to the universities (and round and round and round we go).

My cohort, and the cohort before us…and those that are going to come after us, are about to change all of that. We’re working to reduce that feedback loop, to make it more efficient, and to work to understand systemic barriers that agencies, and workers face, along with the populations that they serve. We also want to reduce the barriers that researchers have, in order to shorten bridges and close gaps. While we do this, we conduct our own research into the best ways of implementing new evidence based practices, science, and technologies into the field so that they can be deployed as safely and as rapidly as possible.

What can we do to make sure agencies and workers remain on top of cutting edge information and technology while understanding the realities they face in their day-to-day lives? How do we help researchers design methods that take into account better the realities of the field, so that they can receive more accurate data? How do we make that feedback loop into weeks or months instead of a decade? A lofty goal, but a necessary one as we move past 2020 and into the future.

I am beyond excited. I took a lot of notes in my BuJo today; I would say that most of them were some inspirational, in the moment quotes, from our professors (and others were resources, and just good information to have). I need to now process that, and this moment.

Welcome to UB Class of 2023!