摘要：Objectives. To establish a baseline of health content in 4 domains of US social work education—baccalaureate, master’s, doctoral, and continuing education programs—and to introduce the Social Work Health Impact Model, illustrating social work’s multifaceted health services, from clinical to wide-lens population health approaches. Methods. We analyzed US social work programs’ Web site content to determine amount and types of health content in mission statements, courses, and specializations. Coding criterion determined if content was (1) health or health-related (HHR) and (2) had wide-lens health (WLH) emphasis. A second iteration categorized HHR and WLH courses into health topics. Results. We reviewed 4831 courses. We found broad HHR content in baccalaureate, master’s, and continuing education curricula; doctoral programs had limited health content. We identified minimal WLH content across all domains. Topical analysis indicated that more than 50% of courses concentrated on 3 areas: mental and behavioral health, abuse and violence, and substance use and addictions. Conclusions. As a core health profession, social work must strengthen its health and wide-lens content to better prepare graduates for integrated practice and collaboration in the changing health environment. Health has been a major practice area within social work since the early 20th century, when social workers first worked alongside public health officers, nurses, and doctors in infectious disease control, hospitals, and maternal and child health. 1 Today, health social work includes medical social work, public health social work, and many subtypes of practice dedicated to specific diseases. Roughly half of the workforce, some 300 000 practitioners, is employed in health. Within a decade, estimates indicate that 75% of social workers will work within health. 2 Social workers, even those not directly employed in health, address the social determinants of health as they perform myriad roles in child welfare, schools, criminal justice, and other systems. Powerful issues, such as health inequalities, increases in chronic disease, a rapidly aging population, urbanization, and health reform, are challenging the profession to educate and practice for greater effectiveness and impact in health. While much of contemporary health social work focuses on clinical services, 3 a substantive sector works at the intermediate and systems levels as navigators, researchers, policy analysts, community practitioners, administrators, and public health social workers. 2,4,5 Expansion of the latter is crucial to strengthening social work’s role in addressing complex health problems. 6–8 Beddoe refers to these systemic, cross-sectoral, and public health approaches as wide-lens approaches, 6 and notes they have the greatest impact on human health. In particular, such approaches are essential to addressing the social determinants and unmet social needs that contribute to poor health in the modern era. 6,9,10 Social work practice in prevention, advocacy, community health, and public health social work are prime examples of the profession’s longstanding and current use of wide-lens approaches. 11 Educating for an integrated health social work that broadens to emphasize these wide-lens approaches and reconnects them to clinical practice can enhance social work’s effectiveness in promoting health. 12
