Abortion vs. Health Care I disagree that abortion is health care. We should use our efforts to speak up for the unborn, who have no choice when it comes to determining their future. Barbara Solt’s own ambiguity is clear when she maintains (“Health Care Reform Efforts in Question,” February News) that abortion should not be the first choice for a woman, but then also states it is a humane choice. Right to life is the most pressing civil liberties issue of our time. For those of us who are Judeo-Christian practitioners, one of the basic tenets of our faith is, “Thou shall not kill.” I would ask you also to conside...

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NASW is hosting its second annual social work practice conference this summer. “Social Work’s Critical Role in End of Life Care” will take place Aug. 4 in Boston directly before the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization’s Special Topic Conference 2010, “Developing the Care Continuum: Innovative Models to Meet the Unique Needs of Patients/Families.” “Our goal is to link this conference with the NHPCO event so it will help limit expenses for attendees,” said NASW Executive Director Elizabeth J. Clark. “This conference is timely,” she added, “because it is occurrin...

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NASW has updated its Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, online policies, forms and online training course. The information can assist social workers who are required to abide by the client privacy policies outlined in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, said Sherri Morgan, associate counsel for the NASW Legal Defense Fund. As a result of the HITECH amendments, HIPAA standards have been tightened and clarified to reflect needed changes and they list specific notification requirements to clients if there is an unauthorized release of their private health records, speci...

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Whoever said “nothing worthwhile comes easily” might as well have been talking about health care reform. After losing their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate by one vote, congressional Democrats in January all but abandoned efforts to forge a final health care reform bill by merging versions previously passed in the House and Senate, H.R. 3962 and H.R. 3590 respectively. Now that they are down to 59 votes in the Senate (two Independents — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman — caucus with the Democrats), Democratic congressional leaders would need to further consider means of overcom...

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Social Worker and NASW Member Meg Kallman had never seen such devastation. “Buildings were flattened like pancakes, streets were impassable with debris, cement and dust everywhere ... just everywhere,” she said, struggling for the words to convey her first impression of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. On Jan. 13, just a day after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake brought that Caribbean island nation to its knees, killing hundreds of thousands of people and injuring countless more, Kallman and her colleagues with the New Jersey-1 Disaster Medical Assistance Team received orders that they were to be deployed to Haiti. Eighty percent of Haiti&rs...

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Sarah Gehlert doesn’t need a microscope to figure out your odds of surviving cancer, she can tell from the house and neighborhood you live in. Since 2003, the director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Research in Chicago has been leading a team of social, behavioral and biological researchers in exploring the reason why, despite the fact that white women are more likely to develop breast cancer, black women are more likely to die from the disease. By studying how social and psychological factors influence disease in lab rats and following a cohort of black women with breast cancer living in predominantly black ...

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Jan. 2010 Board's Action Context Finance Accepted the audited financial report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009, and received the financial report for the period ending Dec. 31, 2009. As of Dec. 31, NASW’s total asset position was $14.7 million. Assets have increased by $2.2 million from the same time last year. This is primarily due to the increase in the value of investments. Over...

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The Alzheimer’s Association has continued to rely on NASW for social work knowledge in its latest phase of Campaign for Quality Care manuals known as Dementia Care Practice Recommendations. The fourth phase in the series, Dementia Care Practice Recommendations for Professionals Working in a Home Setting, was recently released. These specific recommendations emphasize a person-centered, culturally sensitive care approach to meet the changing needs of each person with dementia and their family living in a home setting. Chris Herman, senior practice associate for aging at NASW, noted the association has worked with the Alzheimer’...

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ACSW members “represent the thought leadership of the profession.” NASW has much in the way of pomp and circumstance in store to celebrate 50 years of the Academy of Certified Social Workers credential. Established in 1960, the ACSW was the first national credential for the social work profession. In February, NASW launched an advertising campaign with a full-page display ad in the NASW News featuring notable achievements throughout the past five decades by ACSW credential holders — among them NASW President James J. Kelly and Executive Director Elizabeth J. Clark. In the 1980s, Kelly oversaw one of the first and longes...

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Judy Lukas Arnold received the 2009 Department of Veterans Affairs Under Secretary for Health Award for Excellence in Social Work Leadership. Arnold was recognized for her 33 years of service to the nation’s veterans. She is one of 7,000 social workers employed by the VA. She is currently the chief of social work service for the VA Eastern Kansas Health Care System, which serves Topeka, Leavenworth, Wyandotte County, Saint Joseph, Fort Riley, Fort Scott, and surrounding areas. Some of Arnold’s career highlights include: 1) being the project lead for “The Price of Freedom: The Military Experience” film, which won two...

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