UK Professors Co-Edit Social Work Justice Textbook

Two University of Kentucky College of Social Work faculty members co-edited a textbook published in June 2025 to prepare students for addressing systemic inequities in practice.

Natalie Pope, associate professor and director of the Ph.D. program, and Diane Loeffler, senior lecturer, worked with Kalea Benner, dean of Indiana University, on "Social, Racial, Economic, and Environmental Justice: Building Social Work Practice Skills."

The book uses justice as a framework spanning social, racial, economic and environmental dimensions. Each chapter combines historical and policy perspectives with strategies for real-world practice in education, criminal justice, child welfare, housing, health and environmental contexts.

"Justice-informed practice requires both foundational knowledge and the ability to recognize how policies and structures can create or perpetuate harm," Pope said.

Pope received the 2021 Rose Dobrof Award from the Journal of Gerontological Social Work for research on cumulative trauma in men over 50 with homelessness histories. Loeffler won the University of Kentucky's Outstanding Teaching Award and participated in the 2025 Rural Investment Summit in Memphis, Tennessee, where she worked with banking, philanthropy and nonprofit leaders on rural economic challenges.

Following the 2022 Eastern Kentucky floods, Pope and Loeffler led a research project examining nonprofit and volunteer responses to the disaster. The project embedded doctoral students as co-investigators. Findings appeared at regional and national conferences and in the "Troublesome Rising" anthology.