Sean Joe is a nationally recognized authority on suicidal behavior among Black Americans, and is expanding the evidence base for effective practice with Black boys and young men. He writes about Community Science as a new perspective on knowledge co-produced by academic researchers and community members, which has the potential to enrich science by broadening our participatory research theories, designs, analytical methods, and the use of technological innovation. Joe’s epistemological work focuses on the concept of race in medical and social sciences.
Working within the Center for Social Development, Joe has launched the Race and Opportunity Lab, which examines race, opportunity, and social mobility in the St. Louis region, working to reduce inequality in adolescents transition into adulthood. The lab leading community science project is HomeGrown STL, which is a multi-systemic placed-based capacity building intervention to enhance upward mobility opportunities and health of Black males ages 12-29 years in the St. Louis region.
He is exploring new opportunities for engaging in larger-scale policy experiments by using data to examine wealth inequalities and barriers to wealth building for Black men. This includes understanding unequal labor market outcomes for men and the regional system-level factors that impact economic conditions in low- to moderate-income communities, which serve as barriers to equity in economic mobility, earnings, and capital access for Black workers.
He serves on the Advisory Committee of the Kaiser Permanente Center for Gun Violence Research and Education, as well as on the boards of the St. Louis Education Fund and the American Academy for Social Work and Social Welfare.
In recognition of the impact of his work, Joe was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, the Society for Social Work and Research, the New York Academy of Medicine, and a Community Development Research Fellow of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Now is the time for decisive leadership and policy action, informed by the available or new behavioral health science. America might be approaching a tidal wave of despair and our behavioral health systems cannot adequately prepare without prudent federal legislative action, writes Sean Joe.
Completing the 2020 census – and everyone verifying it is done, one family at a time – can guarantee shelter, education and food on the table for today’s children and tomorrow’s grandchildren, especially for those living in North City and North County, writes Sean Joe.
HomeGrown STL, a Brown School program aimed at improving community-level capacity to reduce inequality in Black adolescents’ healthy transition to adulthood, has won an inaugural Social Justice Innovation Award from financial firm Morgan Stanley and the nonprofit Centri Tech Foundation.
HomeGrown StL, an initiative born of the Race and Opportunity Lab at the Brown School, recently formed a Regional Steering Committee to provide direct community governance.
As the nation struggles with police violence, a new report from HomeGrown StL in the Race and Opportunity Lab at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis recommends reforms to build an equitable, transparent and accountable public safety approach that will include lawsuit liability, a police misconduct database and federal funding mandates.
America might be approaching a tidal wave of despair and our behavioral health systems cannot adequately prepare without prudent federal legislative action. After all the many congressional legislative phases of economic stimulus relief, behavioral care relief is also needed. Our future depends on the decisions we make today.
Sheltering in place, black households have a unique window of opportunity to surpass the 2010 Census completion rate of less than 60% for the City of St. Louis.
While suicide attempts decreased overall among U.S. adolescents between 1991 and 2017, they increased by 73% among black adolescents, finds a new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
In the United States, almost 50,000 people die every year from suicide. While participating in a June 13 briefing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., a Washington University in St. Louis expert testified that — amid the need nationally to stem violence in schools and elsewhere — suicide remains preventable.
Income may be more of a determinant for exposure to police use of force during a street stop for black women with incomes of $50,000 or more, finds a new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
A more comprehensive picture of mental health that includes subjective well-being and other positive mental health characteristics could lead to more successful educational experiences among black youth, finds a recent study from Sean Joe, professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
Screening for suicide risk among publicly insured urban children who are experiencing psychological distress is vitally important, finds a new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
In the United States, there are more than 32,000 deaths per year from gun violence. More than 60 percent of those are from suicides. These issues and more will be discussed during “Guns, Suicide and Safety: A Community Forum,” at 3 p.m. Monday, Feb. 15, in Hillman Hall’s Clark-Fox Forum.
Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton installs the Brown School’s Sean Joe as the Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development during a ceremony Jan. 26 in Brown Lounge.
A Q&A with Sean Joe, PhD, the Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development at the Brown School, who came to Washington University in St. Louis this fall from the University of Michigan. His research focuses on black adolescents’ mental health; the role of religion in black suicidal behavior; and the development of father-focused, family-based interventions to prevent black adolescent males from engaging in multiple forms of self-destructive behaviors.
