Health care and social work education in a changing world

This article examines two major challenges that beset contemporary social work education, namely, rapid and dramatic macro-level changes that are occurring in the social, political, economic and demographic realms and, also, the slow speed at which curriculum changes occur in institutions of higher education. Primarily employing managed care as an example, a series of recommendations are offered to improve social work education concerning health care. Among them are more efficient mechanisms for introducing curriculum changes, greater emphasis on research and evaluations skills, systematic monitoring of health care programs, preparation of public impact reports, better utilization of modern information technologies, and the introduction of mini-courses that can be adapted readily to emerging health care and educational needs.