Thank you to Elizabeth Gilbert for coordinating and being part of the interview.
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Bio
Transcript
Introduction
Hey there podcast listeners, Jonathan here. Ten years ago (literally, 10 years and one day) on Episode 103, I spoke with Rick Barth about the brand new Grand Challenges for Social Work.
In that episode, Rick introduced the idea of a Grand Challenge and talked about a 10-year timeline for focusing resources and attention to address 12 problems to be solved including: ensuring healthy development for youth, promoting smart decarceration, eradicating social isolation, and reducing extreme economic inequality.
One of those 12 was Harness Technology for Social Good, and I had a personal connection to it: I had co-authored one of two working papers that started it, alongside Stephanie Berzin and Chitat Chan. Harness Tech was unique in that it was the only one of the 12 that wasn't framed as a problem to be solved. As I came to think of it, the 'grand challenge' around social work and technology was really the idea that social work needed to take technology seriously, which it did, starting March 13, 2020 (aka the day the COVID-19 pandemic came to the USA).
At the time of the interview, the Grand Challenges for Social Work was a shiny new idea work, and there was a lot of buzz around the possibility of making measurable progress on solving these 12 — or at least, 11 — of these issues.
At the end of the interview, I asked Rick,
[31:56]
Jonathan Singer: So imagine it’s 2025 and you’re invited to give a talk commemorating the ten-year anniversary of the Grand Challenge initiative. What do you hope that you will be able to say about how the field has advanced in ten years?[32:13]
Richard P. Barth: I hope that for each of the twelve Grand Challenges there would be very clear and measurable goals that have been identified, and that for most of them—if not all of them—there would be substantial progress toward addressing those goals.It may be that we won’t have the resources to measure all of that impact, which is an expensive enterprise, but I would hope that we would at least have the theories in place, the interventions in place, training programs that are beginning to prepare people to do innovative work, collaborations across disciplines—which will be a critical effort—funders who are interested in what we’re doing and are committed to developing these Grand Challenges.
And very importantly, I would hope that there would be enough work across the Grand Challenges to share new innovations in research methods and intervention development, technology, surveying and sampling, measuring outcomes, and using social media to communicate those outcomes. So that the entire enterprise of social work would be lifted up in terms of what people expect of us—knowing that they could expect strong, well-evaluated, reasoned analysis and clear communication resulting from any investment they make in social work.
[33:46]
Jonathan Singer: So in addition to being able to look back and see what was achieved, it also sounds like not just that there is good for the greater society, but also that there’s a benefit to social work—people are able to see social work as making valuable contributions to society, maybe in ways that they never imagined.[34:07]
Richard P. Barth: Absolutely. We would certainly hope that there would be students who are now in eighth grade who would then be attracted to social work as a profession. They would see that the opportunities are great, that this is incredibly exciting and promising work to do.We would hope that they would choose this path over other possible paths, and that people who are thinking about changing careers would give very high regard to becoming part of the Grand Challenge of social work by joining the profession. The effect would be an invigorated, well-resourced profession that is recruiting the best talent and creating work that is interesting and rewarding enough to retain great social workers over long periods of time, while enhancing the well-being of society.
So, if there are any social work students who are listening to this podcast who got excited about social work because you heard about one of the Grand Challenge initiatives, let me know.”
10 years in, Rick continues to be involved in the Grand Challenges, but there is new leadership. In today’s episode I’m talking with Carrie Pettus, chair of the executive board for the Grand Challenges for Social Work. Today’s episode explores the 10-year journey of the Grand Challenges for Social Work, reflecting on its evolution, its measurable impacts, and the critical lessons learned along the way. Carrie talks about successes, including creating a vast social and professional network dedicated to solving some of the most persistent social problems, and some of the challenges, including the difficulty defining and measuring impact, which she acknowledges is ironic given that the initiatives are lead by some of the leading scholars in the world. She also acknowledges some of the misses, such as uneven involvement of frontline social workers and not including an initiative explicitly focusing on eliminating racism until a few years ago. We end the conversation with Carrie discussing the importance of sustainability and resources if the Grand Challenges for Social Work initiative is to continue for another 10 years.
And now, without further ado, on to episode 150 of the Social Work Podcast, The Grand Challenges for Social Work: 10 Year Update with Dr. Carrie Pettus.
Interview
Jonathan Singer: So, Carrie. Ten years in, what did the Grand Challenges get right and what did it get wrong?
Carrie Pettus: I think what the Grand Challenges did best is create social networks of people focused on some of society's toughest challenges and we have gone beyond geographic boundaries. We eliminated them as a barrier to having communities of practice, using science to understand our really difficult challenges and to make progress towards addressing them. I think our biggest miss in doing this work is we didn't document it. We are a bunch of scientists that didn't document our own process. And because of that, when people ask questions about our measurable impact, how we moved the needle in different scientific areas, and even how we moved the needle in people's career trajectories, we can't give them quantitative findings. All we can do is talk about anecdotal stories and point to thousands of articles and presentations and books that have been produced as a result of the initiative. So going forward, it will be really important for us researchers to empirically assess our own progress and to come up with an agreed upon set of outcomes that will feel meaningful to the field that are above and beyond each of the issues that the Grand Challenges are tackling.
Jonathan Singer: So, what are some areas where there was some real measurable impact?
Carrie Pettus: Well, it depends on how you define impact and this is a conversation I've been having a lot lately. There has always been critiques that the Grand Challenges as we moved through the years wasn't having an impact and nobody ever defined the word impact. So, what I discovered recently is when people were saying impact what they were talking about is was the problem being solved that each network addressed. So was promote smart decarceration resulting in decarceration, was eliminate racism changing the nature of racism in this country? And over the past 10 years there were significant impacts in things like decarceration and there were significant impacts in racism and diversity, equity, and inclusion. And we're at the beginning of 2026 right now during this interview and a lot of those impacts were erased because society shifted out from under us. Does that mean those networks didn't have any impact or does that mean that humans were behaving like humans and as our societal structures reorganized the problems we are addressing intensified? So what I've realized recently is that we've missed the mark on having a conversation about what impact is. As human societies have evolved, our innovations, our progress have evolved. And that's because the humans creating them have become more educated. They've coordinated differently. They've concentrated resources differently. The opportunities for career trajectories have become different in ways that improved knowledge and innovation and technology and that is what the Grand Challenges has done in a microcosm within the profession of social work. We have exponentially changed the way we talk about, the way we think about, and the way we study and tackle major societal problems. And we now have a concentration of intellectual, financial, human capital all marching forward towards solving these different issues. People see themselves clearly in roles in social work that they never did before. And I think when people have conversations about does the Grand Challenges have impact or not, that is not the conversation they're having. And I think it should be.
Jonathan Singer: So, building off that idea of gathering the data, building the communities, how well did the Grand Challenges bring frontline practitioners and communities into the work?
Carrie Pettus: So, people talk about this quite a bit and I think the first thing to recognize is that each network has engaged in the grand challenge they're addressing differently. So I was previously a co-lead of the promote smart decarceration network. Everything that we did in our own research agendas that were tied to the promote smart decarceration network and everything we did around our events, and our collective efforts involved community partners. So one of the first activities that we did as a promote smart decarceration network was to hold a convening of a hundred different researchers, practitioners, people with lived experience in incarceration, their family members, senators, Congress people, all participated in this day and a half long event that ultimately resulted in the publication of a book and half of the chapters in the book were practitioners or people with lived experience and half were researchers. So that's one example of a network that was highly involved with community and practitioners. Another network that is focused on economic progress—that network has changed federal policy and state policies, but they weren't partnering with communities to do it. Does that mean that it wasn't applied? No. It means that their vehicle of impact required legislators and staffers. So, I don't know that we say they're not engaging community because I think when people ask about engaging community, they're asking whether our science is actually making a difference in the field. And I would say that, you know, federal policy, one of which resulted in our current administration calling them Trump accounts instead of child savings account, that is enormous impact on the community, but it's through a different mechanism. I think maybe what the better question that we all should be asking ourselves is “are there frameworks and models that haven't been written up yet by the networks that can talk about how our research and our discoveries can be the most applied?” I think that's the question we should be talking about.
Jonathan Singer: So, looking back, how successfully did the Grand Challenges initiative address racial and social equity? And where did it miss the mark?
Carrie Pettus: Yeah, I'm not avoiding the question with this first response, but I do think it circles back to a conversation we were having earlier in that that is the issue of measurement and the lack of documentation of what's been happening within each of these works. So, in the shortest answer is I don't think we know. But what we did see is that the intentional placement of racial and social equity as an intended outcome was not clear in the invitation of concept papers, in the assessment of what ideas constituted grand challenges or not, and in the selection of the Grand Challenges networks. And as a result, there was a reactionary response. We need a new network about addressing racism. We need to tell the networks that they need to be more intentional about that. But because it wasn't a founding framework, I think that it most likely did get missed as a central premise in many of the networks. And I think there are many reasons why it could have gotten missed, but one of those is the assumption that because social work has a code of ethics that says we by definition as a profession ethically commit to promoting social equity and racial equity. That assumption was problematic in that when people become initially socialized as social work students, they signed the code of ethics and then often times in our educational practices, our research practice, our translation of scientific discoveries to the field, we are silent on social equity and racial equity because we just assume that's the platform that everybody's coming from which we also assume that everybody understands what social work is. So, I suspect that we missed the mark, but I will say that we didn't measure it. So, I don't feel confident in making an informed comment on how well we did it or not.
Jonathan Singer: Well and I know that when I talked to Rick Bar 10 years ago about this—not just racial but specifically—he said well there are lots of things that aren't standalone like poverty is not a standalone grand challenge and I think his thought at that time was that there was the assumption that it would be embedded and integrated into each initiative.
Carrie Pettus: Naturally.
Jonathan Singer: Naturally.
Carrie Pettus: Right, right because how can you address technology without addressing racial and social inequities, how can you address issues of isolation, issues of smart decarceration? All these issues without addressing them. And so, I think he would have said that there was an assumption and then maybe those assumptions didn't pan out. Because there was a 13th grand challenge initiative added.
Jonathan Singer: Right. And you know what they say about assumptions.
Carrie Pettus: And I won't finish the rest of that statement, but I mean there are ways. So, promote smart decarceration, we have a very solid history of showing that you can decarcerate and increase racial disparities. We did it from about 1994 to 2026 and we're still going. So, I think the assumptions are very dangerous and that is something looking towards the future that we need to be even more intentional and clearer about than some people within their networks may have thought they were already being.
Jonathan Singer: So, if you were to start the Grand Challenges today and organize initiatives and do all that sort of stuff, what would it look like? What would the topics be? Would they be the same? Would they be different?
Carrie Pettus: Yeah, it's something that I'm spending a lot of time thinking about and having a lot of conversations around and I would say the first thing that I would do is better financially resource the initiative prior to launching it. It is mindblowing what has been accomplished entirely by volunteer power and the amount of time that the network leads have remained engaged in the initiative. Many of the network leads have been there for 10 years and then it was a year or two even getting to that point because they propose concept papers and things like that. And so if we have almost a hundred volunteers who have been there for over 10 years who have engaged other people, proselytized so to speak, the Grand Challenges to engage other people, something was beneficial to them and by not appropriately financing the initiative, we have handcuffed them for the past decade on the type of impact they can have on the outcome that each network is addressing. So that is I believe should be a flashing light of if I was launching it today; the ability of the networks to achieve their objectives and goals would be tenfold if we had financially resourced it. And so you can't wait till you have the finances before you launch in every initiative but maybe you can have a little more and build it into the model. The second thing that I would do if I launch the initiative for the first time today is build in mechanisms for tracking what is happening, tracking the social networks. There's all sorts of social network analysis methodology tracking how the problem is shifting over time in terms of if scientific discoveries are actually being implemented into the field. I would track incoming students and emerging scholars and how their research ties into the grand challenges. And I would have—not initially but I would build a timeline for when the profession should be engaging other disciplines in the problem from a leadership perspective across the Grand Challenges initiatives because I know people talked about starting there but sometimes you need to figure out your own identity in an initiative before you can engage other people in sharing their identities in making progress towards an issue. Some of those are some of the early things that I would do. The other thing that I would do is more intentionally be present at all the different professional societies that social work has and all the different convenings because the Grand Challenges has been most present at the Society for Social Work and Research conference. And I think going forward it's really important to be present at numerous national organizations of social work, so that everybody can see themselves in the initiative. You asked also about—and I'll end here because I don't know the answer—but you asked about like what outcomes would be different and that's one of the things we're thinking about and talking about too is how do we simplify describing what the Grand Challenges is doing and I think that simplification would also make it much clearer on what our outcomes could and should be.
Jonathan Singer: So, Carrie, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us about the last 10 years of the Grand Challenges, and what we might be looking forward to in the future.
Carrie Pettus: Thank you so much for doing this podcast. It’s really important to share our story.
~~END~~
References & Resources
The 13 Grand Challenges for Social Work
Individual and family well-being
- Ensure healthy development for youth
- Close the health gap
- Build healthy relationships to end violence
- Advance long and productive lives
Stronger social fabric
- Eradicate social isolation
- End homelessness
- Create social responses to a changing environment
- Harness technology for social good
- Prevent gun violence
Just society
- Eliminate racism
- Promote smart decarceration
- Build financial capability and assets for all
- Reduce extreme economic inequality
- Achieve equal opportunity and justice
Episode #103 (2016, March 28). The Grand Challenges for Social Work: Interview with Dr. Richard P. Barth [Audio Podcast]. Social Work Podcast. Retrieved from https://www.socialworkpodcast.com/2016/03/grand-challenges.html
APA (7th ed) citation for this podcast:
Singer, J. B. (Producer). (2026, March 29). #150 - The Grand Challenges for Social Work: 10 Year Update with Dr. Carrie Pettus [Audio Podcast]. Social Work Podcast. Retrieved from https://www.socialworkpodcast.com/2026/03/GCSW10anniversary.html
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