Freedman, Ethan
Professor Katrina Balovlenkov
Columbia University School for Social Work, New York
Submitted in partial fulfillment as a Placement Description Paper within the requirements for Columbia's School for Social Work program and Prof. Katrina Balovlenkov Health Care Systems course.
Acknowledgements:
I would also like to acknowledge Prof. Katrina Balovlenkov and her class in Health Care Systems (SOCWT6910) for introducing me to pivotal social work, health care, and LME principles. Moreover, my LME and course peers who I worked closely in discussion and were very influential in developing thoughts on leadership and health care around this paper. I appreciate everyone in the class for the ideas they have assisted in generating. With these acknowledgements, I present the following work of my own.
The Social Intervention Group (SIG) at Columbia University's School of Social Work is a leading model of research intervention in the fields of health, mental health, and social welfare. Established in 1990, SIG has become an internationally recognized interdisciplinary center dedicated to advancing evidence based, sustainable solutions addressing HIV, substance use, intimate partner violence (IPV), and trauma among vulnerable populations. Through affiliation with a university, SIG operates at the nexus of public health policy, community interventions, and social work praxis. Its mission reflects a commitment to generating empirically grounded knowledge while simultaneously promoting social justice and equity through applied research and dissemination of effective interventions.
From examining the structural, administrative, and policy contexts that define SIG"s operations, an overview of the organization's history, governance and funding structures situates SIG within institutional domains of Columbia University and the field of public health and social work. Within these confines, the influence of major health policies surrounding HIV prevention, substance use, and intimate parental violence is discussed in tandem with SIG's programming and the professional practice of a social work graduate research intern concentrating in Leadership, Management, and Entrepreneurship in areas of The Health Care System. The overarching interdependence between organizational design and the policy contexts governing social and health research initiatives is unveiled alongside social work research experiences at SIG.
SIG Practicum Culture and the Graduate Student Researcher Experience
Bridging Policy and Practice
Inside Columbia University's School of Social Work (CSSW) situates the Social Intervention Group, a research lab founded in 1990 to address the growing health crisis of HIV/AIDs and substance use among vulnerable populations. SIG has evolved into an internationally recognized hub for applied research and intervention development focused on intersecting social and health inequities, including trauma, intimate partner violence (IPV), and comorbidities. Dedicated to advancing evidence based sustainable solutions from within CSSW boundaries that promote health equity and improve the lives of agents and communities affected by structural disadvantage, SIG occupies a critical position bridging academic research, policies, and community practice.
While SIG research positions are open to any student concentrating in facets of social work, the Leadership, Management, and Entrepreneurship (LME) concentration combines wonderfully with the intensive health and mental health policy and programming necessary for SIG core processes and functioning. The organizational design of SIG is a research model centering university initiatives and social work values of equity, inclusion, and practice. Faculty researchers, doctoral and master's students, project managers, and research assistants collaborate with social work interns across multiple studies that address complex topics. The organization is directed by Dr. Nabila El-Bassel, Dr. Lousia Gilbert, and Dr. Elwin Wu, and functions within Columbia's administrative hierarchy for sponsored research. SIG's structure emphasizes both academic rigor and community partnership, reflecting a dual commitment to knowledge production and translation of research to practice. It integrates mentorship, interdisciplinary collaboration, and reflective supervision to reinforce organizational pedagogy as a training ground for emerging social worker professionals and researchers.
Legal and Administrative Structures of SIG
In terms of legal and administrative identity, SIG functions as a research entity embedded within Columbia University rather than as an independent corporation or nonprofit organization. Its financing is primarily based on grants and support from federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA). Additional resources are obtained through collaborations with organizations such as UNICEF, the New York State Department of Health, and other CSSW institutional stakeholders. The organization is licensed and accredited through Columbia University's Office of Sponsored Projects Administration, and its research is governed by the university's Institutional Review Board (IRB), ensuring compliance with federal standards for human subjects protection, data security, and ethical research practices. All researchers, staff and students are required to complete a comprehensive set of compliance training for HIPAA, CITI, and Good Clinical Practice to ensure adherence to confidentiality and ethical standards outlined in the SIG Orientation Manual (2025).
SIG is subject to oversight by multiple governmental and institutional entities. At the federal level, the NIH, CDC, and NIDA establish parameters for funding priorities, evaluation standards, and research accountability. Audits by the Trump administration serve to ensure SIG's research maneuvers alongside federal values, while New York State Department of Health provides its own regulations on public health interventions, HIV prevention protocols, and community programming. At a university level, the Columbia IRB, the Office of Research Compliance and Training, and the School of Social Work's administrative leadership oversee ethical, fiscal, and procedural dimensions of SIG's work. This multilayered system of oversight ensures that SIG's activities align with both professional standards of social work practice and legal mandates that regulate health and human service research.
SIG as a Practicum Placement: Public Health Research Ethics and Social Work Practice
As a practicum field site, SIG provides a microcosm of the challenges and opportunities inherent in health and mental health social work practice within environments oriented around research. Its organizational structure demonstrates how leadership and management frameworks in tandem with ethics and collectivity. The program facilitates how macro level social work competencies are operationalized within the context of health research, from strategic planning and human resource development to interventions rooted in policies. SIG stands as a model for how social work organizations can pursue both scholarly and social missions while advancing the broader goals of health equity and systemic transformation.
Policy Contexts Shaping SIG: HIV Prevention, Substance Use, and IPV
The Work of SIG is situated within a complex policy environment that directly shapes its organizational priorities, funding structures, and intervention strategies. Federal, state, and institutional policies in the areas of HIV prevention, substance use, and IPV establish the regulatory and ethical conditions under which SIG's research and practice occur. SIG must navigate the dual demands of compliance with legal mandates and fidelity to its social justice mission. These policy domains also determine how social workers within the organizations engage with communities, interventions, and maintain accountability to the populations whom they serve.
HIV Prevention:
National and international HIV policies have undergone significant transformation over the past decade, shifting from managing towards centering those with embodied experiences combined with prevention approaches. The Ryan White HIV/AIDs Program and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) testing guidelines remain foundational to this policy landscape, promoting comprehensive interdisciplinary prevention strategies. Godfrey-Faussett et al. (2022) emphasized that sustainable HIV prevention requires interventions centering individual and community contexts with person centered effective prevention dependent on the context. This principle is the root of SIG's projects like PrEP for Wings and peer based HIV testing programs that prioritize gender responsive and trauma informed approaches.
Policy frameworks also determine accessibility to treatment like PrEP). Marcus et al. (2025) argued that equitable access to injectable PrEP demands policy mechanisms to address systems and structures surrounding cost and dissemination. SIG's advocacy for community PrEP interventions, particularly among women involved in the legal system, reflects the notion from O'Reilly et al (2017) that public policy interventions like subsidized HIV testing and national treatment, can increase prevention behavior and reinforce government driven policy alignment with community level practice. These underlying principles in responding to the HIV epidemic translate into guidance for intervention design, ethical supervision, and data collection procedures consistent with institutional and federal mandates.
Substance Use and Harm Reduction:
Substance use policy remains divided between putative medically pathologized models and harm reduction paradigms, directly influencing SIG's capacity to reach high risk populations. British Columbia's decriminalization reform showed that harm reduction sites expanded access and reduced enforcement related barriers (Ali et al., 2025), indicating that drug laws undermine global HIV prevention goals for people who inject drugs (Sevigny et al., 2020). Social workers must reconcile with ethical obligations to clients with legal constraints, as practitioners often navigate moral tension under restrictive policies (Hooker et al., 2024). SIG emphasizes ethical oversight and ongoing training to ensure it sustains and adapts alongside harm reduction practices and evolving policies.
Intimate Partner Violence:
Policy responses to IPV, such as the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), advanced integrated approaches for connecting prevention, legal protection, and health services. SIG's WORTH and E-WORTH programs embody this framework by addressing IPV alongside HIV and substance use risks. Marshall et al. (2018) found that interventions combining HIV and IPV achieved the strongest outcomes when guided by policy mandates. At a global level, Kuchuckhidze et al. (2022) identified IPV as a major structural river of HIV transmission, calling for cross sector policy integration. These findings reinforce the necessity of trauma informed, confidential, and interdisciplinary protocols centering collaboration within SIG's operations.
Future Directions for SIG Rooted: Conjoining Compliance and LME Practice for Resilience
SIG functions within a policy intensive environment where compliance frameworks such as the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), and HIPAA regulations define both ethical and operational standards. Grant funding alongside presently changing policy creates workforce instability, prompting SIG to adopt mentorship based supervision and reflective learning to sustain continuity and accountability (Bolman and Deal, 2021; Kotter, 1995). Weekly supervision and participatory leadership meetings foster cohesion while reinforcing ethical practice, something Emerson (2022) argues alongside successful change depending on communication and cultural alignment modeled from SIG's leadership team. These practices integrate policy obligations, such as HIPAA and VAWA compliance, with human resource management strategies that prioritize ethical leadership and equity. In this way, SIG operationalizes Reisch's (2018) vision of community centered resilience to illustrate how research institutions can merge compliance, praxis, and social justice with public health contexts.
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