Guests Dr. Quenette Walton and Priscilla Kennedy talk about the importance of using qualitative methods when measuring the effects of Covid-19 and racism on Black women’s mental health and identity.

Dr. Quenette L. Walton, LCSW is an Assistant Professor and Co-Director of the Maternal Health Equity Research and Training Center in the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston. Dr. Walton is among a handful of U.S. scholars that specifically investigates how social class, gender, culture, and race affects the mental health and well-being of Black middle-class women. Thus, the aims of her research program are to build knowledge and develop theory that informs policies, practices, and culturally relevant and evidence-based interventions in order to reduce depression and increase well-being among middle-class Black women. Because depression and well-being do not occur in isolation, Dr. Walton also focuses on social class, gender, culture, and race as intersectional social determinants of health and mental health disparities.

Priscilla is a doctoral candidate in the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston. Her dissertation explores the lived experiences of graduate social work students who participated in a course that focused on structural racism as it is manifested in the system of mass incarceration. Priscilla is also interested in understanding how social work students with dominant social identities learn to address their positionality, power, and privilege in relation to their roles in discriminatory systems.

Learn more at uh.edu/socialwork/actionresearch