Husain Lateef centers culturally responsive research to inform social work practice, prevention, and interventions with youth populations of African descent. His scholarship incorporates the advancement of both theoretical inferences for working with Black youth and rigorous science to explore the relationship between Afrocentric constructs and transitional success of Black youth through adolescence (ages 13-17), and emerging adulthood (ages 18-29).  In 2023, Lateef officially launched the Afrocentric Youth Development Lab (AYDL), dedicated to expanding the knowledge base of Afrocentric youth research to inform Social Work practice with Black youth.

Lateef’s research also intersects with his practice experience working with serious juvenile offenders by advancing scholarship to inform reentry for this population post-conviction. Before joining the Brown School in 2019, he served as the social work supervisor for the Arizona Justice Project’s Reentry Team, one of Arizona’s first reentry programs assisting juveniles serving life-without-parole before the Supreme Court found many of those sentences unconstitutional.

Lateef is also a faculty affiliate with the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity (CRE²), a faculty scholar in the Institute for Public Health, and a faculty affiliate with the Institute Clinical & Translational Sciences (ICTS). Courses taught by Lateef include Social Welfare Policy and Services and Criminal Justice-Involved Adults: Practice & Policy Interventions.

Edward F. Lawlor served as dean of the Brown School from 2004 to 2016, and Special Assistant to the Provost from 2016 to 2019. During his term, the School created public health and social policy programs, constructed Hillman Hall, and doubled its faculty and research capacity. His teaching and research focused on public policy and aging, health policy, and social services.

Lawlor’s book Redesigning the Medicare Contract: Politics, Markets, and Agency treats Medicare reform as an exercise in writing a good social contract. He is currently writing a book on distressed middle-country cities as well as a blog on social policy.

Lawlor is the founding editor of the Public Policy and Aging Report and a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. He is a former director and faculty scholar in the Institute for Public Health.

Prior to joining the Brown School, Lawlor served as dean and professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and professor at the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies. He directed the Center for Health Administration Studies and the University’s Graduate Program in Health Administration and Policy.

Dr. Ryan R. Lindsay, EdD, MSW, LCSW, DBT-LBC, is a Professor of Practice and Mental Health Concentration Chair at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.  His work focuses on preparing the behavioral health workforce through advanced clinical education, implementation science, and community-engaged training models.

Dr. Lindsay’s scholarship centers on suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention policy and practice across schools, healthcare, and community systems. He partners with state and community stakeholders to strengthen policy infrastructure and translate evidence-based practices into real-world implementation. His work emphasizes the development and evaluation of interventions that can be delivered by trained non-professionals or interdisciplinary teams working in collaboration with licensed clinicians to expand access to behavioral health supports.

He is also a leader in integrating artificial intelligence into clinical social work education. He is the co-developer of Empathy Helper, an AI-supported simulation platform designed to help students and professionals build interviewing, empathy, and clinical decision-making skills through structured, competency-aligned practice.

In parallel, Dr. Lindsay leads initiatives focused on behavioral health workforce wellbeing, examining strategies to improve recruitment, retention, and sustainability of youth-serving and community-based providers.

Phillip Marotta’s research focuses on the impact of the criminal justice system on disparities in public health, with an emphasis on substance use treatment interventions in justice-involved populations and the HIV care continuum for justice-involved persons with substance use disorders.

Marotta examines medication-assisted treatments for opioid use disorder (OUD) in jails and prisons. A current project evaluates the effects of methadone treatment during custody on recidivism and overdose among recently discharged individuals. 

Marotta recently received a National Service Award to examine the role of criminal justice involvement in retention, injection and sexual HIV risk behaviors, using data from three HIV prevention clinical trials with people who use drugs.

Two of his current projects seek to measure the impact of racial and ethnic discrimination on treatment. The first assesses if social support can moderate the unmet need, driven by discrimination, for substance use treatment for justice-involved people. The second investigates how the attitudes of law enforcement toward harm reduction policies impacts their behavior toward people with OUD in Tijuana, Mexico.

Prior to his time at the Brown School, Marotta was a postdoctoral research fellow at Yale School of Medicine.

Julie Mastnak is a licensed, board-certified clinical psychologist with more than a decade of clinical experience and a specialized interest in the areas of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and differential diagnosis. 

At the Brown School, Mastnak teaches courses in the Mental Health Concentration. She also instructs students pursuing certificates that offer specialized education for working professionals, including the Post-Master’s Certificate Program in Evidence-Based Assessment and Treatment of PTSD in Adults.  

Her years of work with evidence-based, trauma-focused psychotherapy have significantly influenced her pedagogy and her approach to helping students prepare for their future.  She strives not only to teach, but to inspire her students.

Mary M. McKay joined the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis as dean in 2016, continuing the School’s legacy of creating vital knowledge, initiating social change, and preparing leaders to address social and health challenges both locally and globally.

McKay’s academic experience connects deeply to both social work and public health. She has received substantial federal funding for research focused on meeting the mental health and health prevention needs of youth and families impacted by poverty. She also has significant expertise in child mental health services and implementation research methods, as well as over 20 years of experience conducting HIV prevention and care-oriented studies, supported by the National Institutes of Health.

She has authored more than 250 publications on mental and behavioral health, HIV/AIDS prevention and urban poverty, and more. In January 2021, Mary McKay was appointed vice provost of interdisciplinary initiatives in the Office of the Provost and stepped down as dean in 2022. Mary served as the Executive Vice Provost from 2024 – 2026.

Prior to joining the Brown School, McKay was the McSilver Professor of Social Work and the inaugural director of the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research at New York University’s Silver School of Social Work. She previously served as the head of the Division of Mental Health Services Research at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Her prior academic appointments include Columbia University and University of Illinois at Chicago.