Preparing Our Next-Generation Scientific Workforce to Address the Grand Challenges for Social Work

The 12 Grand Challenges for Social Work make clear the need for a broad new approach for social work to solve complex contemporary social problems. The grand challenges likewise highlight the importance of developing and coordinating a plan to prepare the next generations of social work scholars for high-impact careers that contribute to the identification and implementation of solutions. This paper provides an overview of contemporary trends affecting the scientific enterprise in which our current and emerging scholars operate and within which strong practice, policy, and community-engaged research partnerships must be forged and sustained. We discuss modes of successful transdisciplinary team and translational science and how we expect these new scientific approaches to advance the Grand Challenges for Social Work. We identify the major challenges entailed in this ambitious agenda and highlight strategies for successfully conducting coordinated team science that spans disciplines and extends across the entire translational continuum. We outline a series of skills and competencies needed to conduct transdisciplinary team science across the translational continuum, and we offer potential education and training strategies to enhance the transdisciplinary team science and translational capacity of social work research. We conclude with perspectives on how to unite social work visions and organizational capacities to support our transdisciplinary team and translational science efforts.