Fellows

Dr. Padgett, a professor at the Silver School of Social Work at New York University, earned her doctorate in anthropology and is internationally known for her expertise in qualitative methods as well as her research-based advocacy regarding housing and services for homeless persons with serious mental illness.

Dr. Padgett has also published extensively on unmet needs and service use of women with breast cancer, members of ethnic minority groups and at-risk children/adolescents. She is the editor of The Handbook of Ethnicity, Aging, and Mental Health (1995) and The Qualitative Research Experience (2004), author of Qualitative Methods in Social Work Research (2nd ed. 2008), and co-author of Program Evaluation (5th ed., 2009).

Dr. Padgett has had the notable accomplishment of obtaining two NIMH-funded R01 grants that use qualitative methods to understand service use and recovery among dual diagnosed homeless adults. In her roles as principal investigator, consultant and teacher, Dr. Padgett has been an active mentor to others and recently began an annual workshop on qualitative methods targeted to doctoral students and junior faculty in schools of social work.

In 2010, she received the Excellence in Teaching Award from NYU’s Masters in Global Public Health program where she is a faculty instructor. Active in the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) since its inception, Dr. Padgett was honored for her work as President of SSWR with the annual “Deborah Kay Padgett Early Career Achievement Award” in 2006.