The Quick Read

From 2020-2022, the fellowship existed as a national learning collaborative to engage social work scholars and leaders in learning about and experimenting with futures and foresight frameworks to energize and expand health-related social work thinking and practice for a rapidly changing future.

The Deep Dive

The Social Work Health Futures Lab was an 18-month-long exploration, collaborative learning network, fellowship, and playground led by Dr. Laura Nissen, with support from graduate assistant Mackenzie Barron-Tai, to consider how a “foresight lens” might accelerate and improve the impact of social workers who work, do research, or teach in health and health-related areas of practice. Special attention was paid to cultivating a greater ability to navigate uncertainty and turbulence in the practice environment, engaging communities in co-creating their futures, exploring emerging trends and dynamics, and launching a more future-ready next generation of the health social work workforce.

Being ready for the future is more than just asking simple questions. It is a disciplined way of organizing, imagining, and planning ideas — and is best done in a community of people who push each other to question assumptions, explore ethical challenges, and commit to opening new possibilities for thinking and practicing across the profession.

The community intentionally included fellows who were looking at different elements of futures challenges. Some folks focused on climate change, others on food security, bioethics, racism embedded in emerging technologies, and many other areas. The goal of the fellowship was to create spaces to foster intentional cross-fertilization, shared discovery, and meaningful contributions to intentionally evolving health-anchored social work thought and practice.

Common interests and themes centered a commitment to anti-racist principles, the social work code of ethics, and other cutting-edge social work practice spaces such as the Social Work Grand Challenges. Interdisciplinary engagement with engineering and other sciences, the arts, the larger field of social sciences, and a deep variety of perspectives were welcomed.

The 2020-2022 Social Work Health Futures Lab was founded and led by Dr. Laura Nissen.

Foresight Coach

Dr. Jake Dunagan

Graduate Assistant

Mackenzie Barron-Tai

2020-2022 National Advisory Committee

Heidi Allen PhD, MSW; Darla Coffey, PhD, MSW; Mit Joyner, DPS, LCSW; Goutham Menon, PhD; Deb McPhee, PhD; Desmond Patton, PhD; Nancy Smyth, PhD, LCSW; Martell Teasley, PhD, MSW; Edwina Uehara, PhD; Jose Coll, PhD, MSW

2020-2022 Fellows

Meredith Tetloff, Mary Dallas, Alexis Glennon, Anderson Beckmann Al Wazni, Anjanette Wells, Danielle Maude Littman, James (Jimmy) Young, Rachael Dietkus, Jaehee Yi, Julie Muñoz-Najar, Lauri Goldkind, Lillian Beaudoin, Finn McLafferty Bell, Leah Prussia, Jenna Rines, Juan Rios, Nicole Alston, Tonya Bibbs, Samuel Lewis Bradley, Heather Walter-McCabe, Jelena Todić, Sophia Sarantakos, Lakeya Cherry, Hannah Selene Szlyk, Samantha Wolfe-Taylor, Margaret Evans

To establish a national network of future-facing health social work innovators.

To co-create and contribute to a national learning network focused on anti-racist, equitable, and intersectionally relevant emerging and innovative possibilities and practices for social work and health.

To develop an international map of future-related social work innovation and thought.

To elevate and amplify the work of social work health futures lab fellows, other social workers, and other disciplines/sectors breaking new ground in those areas.

To explore the future of artificial intelligence, big data, the internet of things, and other tech as it applied to health social work action spaces (including algorithmic racism and tools to combat it).

To explore the future of work and the future of government, as examples of intersections with the future of health.

To explore climate change and climate justice, geopolitical shifts now and in the future, economic models of the future and the transitions to them as they related to health and well-being.

To invite and encourage national dialogue among social workers and social work academics on how to infuse futures frameworks to increase effectiveness and preparedness in achieving SDOH-related future practice readiness across the profession.

To make recommendations to CSWE regarding what social work educational curriculum of the future should look like and contain.

To engage in intentional learning about the future of health, health care, and social aspects of health and well-being as impacted by global and local trends. Contribute to meaningful and impactful critique and design in these spaces.

To learn from each other and together from futurists about cutting-edge frameworks and tools related to the social determinants of health in social work.

At a culminating retreat in August of 2022 at the Institute for the Future, the fellows came together to reflect on the question: What came out of the Lab?

The many themes, answers, feelings, efforts, and complexities of the fellowship experience were clarified down to 4 guiding words over the course of the retreat — RELATE, CREATE, NAVIGATE, COMPLICATE.

With these qualities as our north star, it was decided that expanding the fellowship into an intentional, open community of social workers at all career levels would be an important next step. That’s where the Social Work Futures Lab — and you — come in! This is a place to share foresight tools and the work of critical futurists, encourage more equity and justice in futures spaces, to play and imagine, spotlight emergent and visionary social workers, and to grow a community committed to equity and anti-oppressive practice.

Read the Final Report for a detailed look at the 2020-2022 Social Work Health Futures Lab outcomes.

The conclusion of the fellowship represented the end of Phase One of our work together as an emerging social work foresight collective.

We believe that growing our connections, our creativity, our ethical and moral grounding, and our commitment to complicate issues of power, privilege and identity are keys to equity-centered activity. That activity is the beginning of Phase Two — this Lab!

We invite all social workers who align with our principles, mission, vision, and intentions to join us and expand the use of critical and participatory foresight within the field of social work.