Martha Bragin, PhD, LCSW, is an Associate Professor jointly appointed to the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College and the Doctoral Program in Social Welfare at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is Chairperson of Global Social Work and Practice with Immigrants and Refugees. She joined the faculty after 25 years of experience supporting governments, non-governmental organizations and United Nations agencies to address the effects of violence and disaster on children, youth and families both in the US and internationally. She is a member of the IASC Reference Group (UN-NGO) on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings, which developed the first international consensus guidelines for the field of mental health and psychosocial support in humanitarian crises, as well as technical advisor to the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action. She serves as UN representative for the International Association of Schools of Social Work

Dr. Bragin works to foster sustainable change with countries in crisis by supporting governments to develop locality based social work standards and create culturally relevant social work and counseling psychology curricula. Current projects include South Sudan and Afghanistan.

Dr. Bragin’s work on psychosocial programs in emergencies engages local partners to support women, children, families and young people to participate in the transformation of the communities in which they live. To ensure the effectiveness of these programs she has and developed and published culturally sensitive ways to measure their effectiveness, including the Community Participatory Evaluation Tool (CPET) for use to determine baseline indicators of children’s well-being and development in cultural context. Current research includes participatory studies defining and operationalizing the concept “psychosocial wellbeing” among women in conflict-affected countries and another on classroom-based interventions to improve educational outcomes for adolescents affected by war and community violence.

Dr Bragin’s published work spans from systems level interventions to interventions for individuals, families and groups. For those efforts, she has been awarded both the Tyson Prize and the Hayman Prize for published work related to conflict affected children and adults.