BU Today: $12.5 Million Anonymous Gift Creates Innovative Center for Social Work, Public Health.

The doctor—and social worker—will see you now. Social workers play a critical role in health care, and an anonymous $12.5 million gift will create a new BU center melding social work and public health science to improve care here and around the globe.

The Center for Innovation in Social Work and Health (CISWH) will be sited on the Medical Campus as part of the School of Social Work and will partner with BU’s Center for Global Health and Development (CGHD). It will “engage a wide group of scholars across the health professions around workable and cost-effective models that serve the broad health needs of people in the United States and abroad,” says Gail Steketee, a professor and dean of SSW.

Preventive medicine requires attention to influences on health like families and neighborhood circumstances, says Steketee, and “social workers understand the large picture of people’s lives—what drags down people’s health and what improves it.”

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