“It's not waiting around for them to change. It's on us to come together and push for the changes that we know we need. That's the foundation of the overarching safer spaces umbrella that I work under. It's what inspires me.”

“Young Black men who reported higher scores of having ubuntu were more likely to see the benefit and value of seeking professional mental health services, whether that be a counselor or a social worker.”

“We're missing the ball. People with long COVID aren't even being assessed for long COVID. We're not finding out that we have it until major events have occurred that may have been avoided altogether.”

- Jazmin Graham, LCSW

"Don't be afraid to have a voice. Advocate for yourself. If you have ideas, get involved. Be as careful as you can be, but just make sure you're offering that piece of education and really just showing people and guiding them through our social work ways. Eventually, people will hear you and understand.”

– Stephanie Stodolka, LMSW

“One out of two adults have somebody related to them who has been incarcerated, So to be able to be effectively responsive to that is such a need.”

“Health inequity is baked into the cake. It is not incidental. If we acknowledge that that is true, that health care providers are trained in a way that reinforces racial biases and gender biases and ableist biases … we could start to do something differently in the way we think about medical practice and medical training in medical school.”

“I don't know how many more times we can say thoughts and prayers for these families when there's tangible steps that we can take that actually change the outcomes of some of these things. How many more lessons do we have to learn? How many more lives do we have to lose? How much more trauma do we have to take on until we say this is enough and actually do something?”

– Kathryn Franco, LMSW, MPH

“They absolutely loved it. The small group of older adults that we took on that experience, they wanted more. ... They felt tech savvy, because they were using [VR]. It also gave them a choice. Where do you want to go today? What would you like to do today? So just giving them that feeling of empowerment.”

– Louanne Bakk

“This is an incredible opportunity for a social worker to show up. And when we do, because of how we are uniquely trained, things get better. Because we do see the person and environment context, and we're not just thinking about remediation of symptoms if you will. We're looking at the structures that help perpetuate or create that person's struggle to begin with.”

"We are talking about a field that likes to tout its ethics and what we do, but our regulatory bodies are not adhering to our core values… This test is not doing anything but creating a massive, expensive barrier.”