Category: Research

Douglas Smith, Director of the Center for Prevention Research and Development at the University of Illinois School of Social Work, was recently featured on The Catalyst podcast. In the episode, Dr. Smith discusses how teens perceive and define recovery, drawing on findings from the Illinois Youth Survey. He explains why only 5% of surveyed Illinois youth consider themselves in recovery—compared to 8% of adults nationally—and explores what this means for schools, communities, and healthcare systems working to support young people.

The conversation also highlights why mobile apps have proven to be relatively ineffective for adolescent mental health treatment and offers insights into alternative recovery pathways. Dr. Smith shares perspectives from his new book, Motivational Interviewing with Families, which provides practical approaches for supporting youth in their recovery journeys.

Listen to the full conversation here: The Catalyst Podcast

The “long arm of childhood” on mortality in older adulthood in the United States and Brazil: examining the role of educational attainment and differences by gender, a paper co-authored by Social Work professor Dr. Flávia Andrade, University of Texas professor Mateo Farina, and Eric Klopack (postdoctoral researcher, University of Southern California at time of writing) has been accepted at Oxford University Press.

Using data from Brazil and the United States, the team analyzed how childhood socioeconomic conditions and childhood health influence mortality later in life.

Their findings concluded how early disadvantages matter in both countries, but the pathways differ. In Brazil, education serves as a pathway linking childhood socioeconomic disadvantage to mortality for women but not men. In the United States, the opposite pattern emerges—education is a pathway for men but not women. Childhood health also predicts mortality in the United States but not in Brazil.

The Children and Family Research Center (CFRC) has published a new study, “Child Maltreatment Re-port, Substantiation and Foster Care Placement: A Latent Class Analysis of Child, Caregiver, and Household Risk Factors Across Screened-In and Screened-Out Cases“.

This study by Dr. Yuerong Liu and colleagues combined qualitative coding of CPS intake reports with latent class analyses to explore the typologies of children and families based on documented risk factors in both screened-in and screened-out families. They also examined how the typologies were associated with maltreatment re-report, substantiation, and foster care placement over a three-year follow up. They identified four groups of children—financial hardship, caregiver drug use, child health issues, and domestic violence. Children facing financing hardship had the highest risk of future CPS involvement. Even when cases were screened out, some children still faced serious outcomes.

A study by Dr. Theodore Cross (retired) and Dr. Yu-Ling Chiu has also been published, titled “Evaluation of outcomes of Mississippi’s Child Advocacy Studies (CAST) initiative“.

Child Advocacy Studies (CAST) is an academic program in the United States responding to the need in colleges and graduate schools for education on child maltreatment. More than 100 American colleges and universities offer CAST courses or a multi-course CAST academic program. CAST students showed significant improvements from the beginning to the end of their CAST course in their self-rating of their skills in child protection and in their judgment in response to vignettes about child maltreatment. This study offers evidence for the value of a CAST program.

Social Work professor Dr. Flávia Andrade, doctoral student Ting Hu, and University of Rhode Island professor Dr. Nekehia Quashie were recently awarded a grant from the World Health Organization (WHO) to focus on the unmet needs of older adults in the Americas. The project, Quantifying unmet need for social care among older persons globally with special attention to the WHO Region of the Americas, seeks to analyze unmet social care needs among older persons (aged 60+) globally, with a focus on the Americas region. The team’s research will leverage publicly available data to quantify unmet needs and provide insights to guide regional and global strategies on long-term care.

In 2020, approximately 16% of the North American population was aged 60+ and is expected to continue rising. Latin America and the Caribbean are expected to reach similar thresholds by 2040. Those aged 80+ are the fastest-growing group, with high vulnerability and increased care demands. Unmet care needs contribute to poor health, reduced quality of life, institutionalization, and mortality.

The team aims to develop a comprehensive research plan, identifying and assessing relevant data sources for analysis; analyze data to estimate unmet social care needs of older persons across multiple countries; and produce a report and a research brief with findings and policy implications specific to the Americas Region.

Their final report is expected to be submitted by December 2025.

Provider Assistance and Training Hub (PATH), Illinois’ premier center for cutting-edge behavioral health training and technical assistance, is sharing an update on its 2024 accomplishments and ongoing initiatives. PATH’s mission is to train and support community providers with implementing new tools, like the IM+CANS, and other news services, including the Pathways to Success initiative, as part of the overall Illinois behavioral health transformation. PATH is a partnership between the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (HFS), the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Social Work, and the Office of Medicaid Innovation.

PATH has begun the Wraparound and Care Coordination fidelity monitoring to support providers through coaching, and training is currently ongoing. The partnership with the University of Washington Wraparound Evaluation and Research Team (WERT), Office of Medicaid Innovation (OMI) and Healthcare and Family Services (HFS) has been in place and production of fidelity data has been used to inform PATH coaching teams to best help providers in their Pathways to Success implementation. The PATH SOC and Clinical Quality Review teams have been the stewards of this work.

The SOC team has been piloting regional Learning Collaboratives for Care Coordination and Support Organizations. This effort brings similar providers together to share strategies and successes of their implementation of High-Fidelity Wraparound and Intensive Care Coordination.

PATH has been selected to present at the National Wraparound Institutes in Washington DC in July 2025. Their presentations will include sharing of best practices and coaching/fidelity monitoring efforts in the Illinois Pathways to Success Initiative.

New providers of Intensive Home-Based Services, Family Peer Support and Therapeutic Mentoring have been supported through training and coaching. The newly established Behavioral Health Clinics have received funds to provide these critical services in Illinois. The PATH IHB/TM/Family Advocacy teams have been proactive in engaging and supporting these new providers of Pathways to Success Services.

The IM+CANS Coaching Team is preparing to launch statewide virtual and in-person Learning Collaboratives in summer of 2025. The IM+CANS Coaching team will bring providers and users of the IM+CANS together to share best practices, solutions and strategies to challenges in implementing the IM+CANS as the Medicaid approved Integrated Assessment and Treatment Planning Tool (IATP).

Through partnership with OMI, HFS and PracticeWise, the PATH IHB Team has been working to expand access and trainings on use of the Managing and Adapting Practice (MAP) tools. The MAP system allows for providers to have access to research and practice guides that extract proven and effective clinical approaches to address a variety of clinical targets. Use of MAP helps ensure that youth and adolescence are receiving intentional, therapeutic interventions that meet their clinical need and that are supported by research.