Ph.D. Candidate Saira Afzal Receives Grant for Research to Advance Health Equity

Saira Afzal, a Ph.D. candidate at Bryn Mawr's Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, has been awarded a Health Policy Research Scholars Dissertation Grant by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She was named a Health Policy Research Scholar by the foundation in 2022.  

These one-time grants support scholar dissertation research that have health policy implications and advance health equity. Afzal’s dissertation, titled “Improving Emergency Psychiatric Care for Sexual and Gender Minority Youth: A Multi-Method Study of Boarding Disparities and Provider Practices,” will be examining existing emergency room care for queer youth in suicide-related mental health crises.  

Afzal will be investigating how psychiatric boarding — a situation in which youth in crisis must wait in the emergency department, sometimes for days or weeks, due to a lack of available inpatient beds — affects transgender and gender-diverse youth and whether boarding prolongs waiting times and delays connection to treatment. The project will also explore how providers navigate issues of belonging, acceptance, and rejection when working with queer youth and their families. Through this work, Afzal hopes to identify any disparities in care for these vulnerable youths and instigate systematic change.  

“Based on my education and clinical experience as a social worker over the last decade, I recognize the importance of not only identifying disparities but also catalyzing change within the systems that perpetuate them. I see my dissertation as both a scholarly contribution and a call to action — a foundation for collaborative efforts between researchers, clinicians, and policymakers to better serve marginalized youth,” says Afzal. “This work is based on a firm belief that in order to advance health equity, all youth deserve timely access to mental health care and support,” she adds.  

The grant will support data collection and analysis for the quantitative and qualitative components of the project, as well as help fund participant recruitment and transcription services.