Integrating social neuroscience and social work: innovations for advancing practice-based research

Throughout the social work profession, there is ongoing interest in building a social science agenda that can address the complex practice-based questions faced by social work professionals today. Methodological innovations and unique funding opportunities have already significantly advanced research on social work practice. Still, there is enthusiastic discussion of how to ensure that such capacity development helps the profession move forward in ways that make use of the biological sciences and that facilitate social work-specific contributions to the larger interdisciplinary scientific community. This article describes how the social work profession can make use of biomedical knowledge and technological advances from social neuroscience to inform psychosocial treatment development, and it illustrates an application to social work practice by giving an example of a substance abuse treatment development process built on social neuroscientific research.