Community health workers impact the lives of residents of underserved areas where basic health services are often scarce. Over the next five years, Arizona State University’s School of Social Work will train hundreds of workers from all over the country, teaching skills designed to improve the health and welfare of thousands of children and families.

• Read more about School of Social Work secures $11M in federal grants to fund community health education, research

As school districts around the country ramp up to welcoming students back in person full time, the National Institutes of Health put out a call to fund additional research projects to identify ways of safely returning students and staff to in-person school in areas with vulnerable and underserved populations. 

• Read more about ASU researcher awarded NIH grant to help safely return children to in-person school

Amid the many challenges of the pandemic, student workers at ASU’s Knowledge Exchange for Resilience (KER) collaborated to drive use-inspired research and develop innovative solutions to make our community more resilient. 

Alexandria Drake
Global health, PhD, School of Human Evolution and Social Change

• Read more about Knowledge Exchange for Resilience gives ASU students invaluable experience

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a globally disruptive force to our human systems for over a year. 

Scholars have already begun researching the effects of the catastrophe as it’s unfolding. But what will that inquiry look like in five years, or a few decades from now? How will researchers measure the shock to and resilience of society?

• Read more about What COVID-19 means for the future of scholarly research

Regents Professor Flavio Marsiglia of the School of Social Work will be honored this week with an ASU Alumni Association award for several recent research milestones, including his role as principal investigator for a project that provides COVID-19 testing and lays groundwork for receiving vaccines for members of underserved Arizona communities.

• Read more about SSW professor to receive Faculty Research Achievement Award at Founders’ Day ceremony

Researchers at Arizona State University's Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center, along with colleagues at Arizona’s two other state universities and Mayo Clinic, are working to reduce misinformation and mistrust about the COVID-19 pandemic among people disproportionately affected by it.

• Read more about ASU part of state consortium that aims to reduce misinformation about COVID-19 in communities of color

• Read more about With COVID-19, will snowbirds still answer the call of warmer weather?

Researchers at the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions have identified the first of 10 ZIP codes where during the next two years they will conduct 29,000 coronavirus tests among members of the most vulnerable populations in Arizona.

Testing will begin Nov. 7 in an area of southwest Phoenix whose ZIP Code is 85041. The others are still being determined.

• Read more about First underserved population identified for ASU to administer COVID-19 tests

• Read more about ASU receives $4.7 million to deploy COVID-19 tests to underserved communities in Arizona

• Read more about Impact of COVID-19 on tribal nations