1.
Fostering Urban Resilience Through
Innovative Transdisciplinary
Partnerships:
The Social Work Grand Challenges Initiative
Susan P. Kemp PhD
IDRC 2016
Davos, Switzerland

2.
Presentation Outline
• Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative:
- Create Social Responses to a Changing
Environment
• Implications: New research and practice
partnerships

3.
Grand Challenges for Social Work
Initiative (AASWSW*)
Ambitious yet achievable goals, focused on
deeply significant social problems, that:
• mobilize the profession
• foster scientific and practice innovation
• connect social work to other efforts targeting the
same issues
• create significant societal impact
http://aaswsw.org/grand-challenges-initiative/

4.
National co-chairs:
Susan Kemp PhD, University of
Washington: spk@uw.edu
Lawrence Palinkas, PhD, University
of Southern California:
palinkas@usc.edu
http://aaswsw.org/grand-challenges-initiative/

5.
Priority Areas
• Disaster preparedness and response
• Environmentally induced migration and
population displacement
• Equity-oriented, socio-ecological urban
resilience policies and interventions
• Proactive engagement and inclusion of
marginalized and vulnerable communities

6.
Resilience:
A Socio-Ecological Approach
“…a multidisciplinary concept that
explores persistence, recovery, and
the adaptive and transformative
capacities of interlinked social and
ecological systems” (Elmqvist, 2014)
Elmqvist, T. (2014). Urban resilience thinking. Solutions, 5, 5, 26-30.

7.
“Reducing social vulnerability
must go hand in hand with
efforts to increase ecological
resilience.” (Shi et al., 2016)
Shi, L. et al. (2016). Roadmap towards justice in urban climate adaptation
research. Nature Climate Change, 6, 131-137.

8.
City of Seattle

9.
Seattle’s Resilience Challenge*
• Inequality
• The risk of catastrophic earthquakes
*100 Resilient Cities: http://www.100resilientcities.org/#/-_/
*http://www.100resilientcities.org/cities/entry/seattles-resilience-challenge#/-_/

10.
SEATTLE: SEISMIC RISK

11.
Environmental
Justice & Equity

12.
“resilience is…an…
opportunity to
(re)imagine a more
just future for all”

13.
The Social Ecology of Urban Resilience:
Community Priorities*
• Affordable housing/displacement
• Wages/jobs (economic insecurity)
• Food insecurity
• Health: individual, family, community
• Racial equity & justice
• Participation and representation: voice
Got Green/Puget Sound Sage (2016), Our people, our planet, our power: Community led
research in South Seattle. http://gotgreenseattle.org/

14.
Create Social Responses to a Changing
Environment: Core Strategies
1. Adaptation/refocusing of social work roles and
interventions: e.g., evidence-based psychosocial
interventions; community engagement/mobilization;
policy advocacy
2. Sophisticated interdisciplinary socio-ecological
research: to develop and hone effective strategies
3. Policy advocacy
4. Impact-oriented partnerships - across community,
disciplinary, sectoral, and national borders.
*Kemp, S. P., Palinkas, L. A., Wong, M., Floersch, J., Wagner, K., …& Nurius, P. (2014). Strengthen the
social response to the human impacts of environmental change. Baltimore, MD: American Academy of
Social Work and Social Welfare.

15.
Multidisciplinary Inquiry for Environmental
Change: Urban Microclimates in Knoxville, TN
Lisa Reyes Mason, Ph.D
Assistant Professor
College of Social Work
Kelsey N. Ellis, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Geography
Jon M. Hathaway, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Civil and Environmental
Engineering

16.
Wicked problems defy a single
interpretation.

17.
THANK YOU!
Susan P. Kemp PhD
spk@uw.edu