Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

Abstract #159042

Sarah E. Raskin, MPH and Megan Sheehan. Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, P.O.Box 210030, Tucson, AZ 85721-0030, 404-808-9328, seraskin@email.arizona.edu

Interpersonal relationships are well-documented in the public health literature for their mitigating effects against behavioral risk taking. Interaction is vital to the formation of interpersonal relationships, as well as to the development of individual identity. Interaction analysis has garnered much attention in social psychology and linguistic anthropology, two subfields whose parent disciplines are now considered core to public health research and practice. However, social worker – client interaction is a rarely studied phenomenon, and what little research exists has often taken an outmoded perspective on these relationships. This study uses micro-analysis to explicate some of the ways that social worker – client interactions resist, critique, replicate, and strategically utilize state and extra-state apparatuses such as welfare reform and structural determinants of health. The authors draw on two weeks of mixed methods fieldwork, during which time they interviewed, observed, and surveyed social workers and their formerly homeless adult clients in San Francisco. They aim to contribute to public health social work praxis by accomplishing the following learning objectives.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe social workers' experiences of interactions with clients;
• Demonstrate basic knowledge of micro-analysis and explain its utility for public health research;
• Analyze social worker – client interactions within broader contexts of welfare reform and structural determinants of health;
• Identify implications of conclusions about social worker – client interactions on public health social work policy and practice, including future theoretical and applied research topics.

Keywords: Research, Homelessness

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No
Any institutionally-contracted trials related to this submission?

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.