Areas of research
Children, Women & Family Well-Being
SP2’s Centers and Faculty, working through an interdisciplinary approach with other Penn Schools, focus on critical reform to the child welfare system, improving the lives of children and women who are victims of abuse, and advocate for policy and practice reform at the local, state, and national levels.
Featured Centers
Ortner Center on Violence and Abuse
The Field Center Children’s Policy, Practice & Research

FEATURED FACULTY
Desmond Upton Patton, PhD, MSW
Professor; PhD, University of Chicago, 2012. Activism & social justice; qualitative methods; youth; gun violence; big data; digital culture; public health; race & ethnicity; social media.

FEATURED FACULTY
Jennifer J. Prah, PhD
Professor; PhD, Harvard, 1998. Health and social policy; health equity and policy; global health justice and government; health and social justice; health financing; economic evaluation; political economy of health; cost analyses.

FEATURED FACULTY
Johanna K.P. Greeson, PhD, MSS, MLSP
Associate Professor; PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2009. The transition to adulthood among youth who age out of foster care; natural mentoring and other supportive adult relationships for youth who age out of foster care; child traumatic stress; applied community-based intervention research and translation of research to practice; resiliency, risk and protective factors; neurobiological mechanisms of resiliency-focused interventions; life course theory; domestic minor sex trafficking

FEATURED FACULTY
Millan AbiNader, LMSW, PhD
Assistant Professor; PhD, Boston University. Gender-based violence; intimate partner violence; intimate partner homicide; rural communities; community-level risk; vicarious trauma.
Related News
Faculty & Research
12/14

SP2 researchers study women’s empowerment in high-risk region through pioneering virtual approach
Recognized for addressing gender inequities through a technology training program that has graduated an estimated 15,000 marginalized women in Venezuela, the nongovernmental organization Aliadas en Cadena aims to replicate its […]
Faculty & Research
12/13

Penn’s Dorothy Roberts urges support for families at SP2 MSW program lecture
Acclaimed scholar of race, gender, and law Professor Dorothy E. Roberts challenged future social workers to “imagine and work toward a better way” when she gave a lecture this fall […]
Faculty & Research
09/22

SP2 students and faculty research prevalence of depression among low-income women
The importance of addressing depression among low-income women in multiple contexts is a theme of recent research by April Ivey, GRS’22, Professor Jacqueline Corcoran, and others at Penn’s School of […]