Maria Ferrera
Associate Professor Social Work, Critical Ethnic Studies
Maria Joy Ferrera is an Associate Professor within DePaul University’s Department of Social Work and Co-Director of the Center for Community Health Equity (CCHE), a partnership between DePaul and Rush Medical Center and University to promote health equity. Among the many areas of work of CCHE is understanding the concept of belonging as a counter-syndemic force to health disparities as she and co-authors write in their latest Op-Ed in Crain’s Chicago Business- Forum on Equitable Health. She is Co-Founder and current interim Executive Director of the Coalition for Immigrant Mental Health (CIMH), a collaborative, community based and research informed
initiative that is a partnership between immigrants regardless of status, mental health practitioners, community organizers, researchers, and allies.
She is a Steering Committee Member of The Midwest Human Rights Consortium (MHRC) a referral network of multi-institutional and interdisciplinary professionals who perform trauma-informed forensic evaluations for individuals seeking asylum in the U.S. As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, she conducts pro-bono mental health forensic asylum assessments for MHRC.
Dr. Ferrera, has recently been awarded DePaul’s Social Transformation and Research Collaborative Professional Development Fellowship funded by the Mellon Foundation. She will use this six-month fellowship to delve into the art of documentary filmmaking as a medium to promote human rights. In collaboration with The Midwest Human Rights Consortium (MHRC) and building on her work as a HumanitiesX Collaborative Fellow, her project aims to humanize the experiences of asylees and increase understanding around the need for legal representation and advocacy, health and mental health resources, and a community of care for asylees and their families.
In the past year, a number of articles (hyperlinks to each article included) in which I have co-authored have been published and/or accepted:
Bishop-Royse, J., Saiyed, N., Schober, D., Laflamme, E., Lange-Maia, B., Ferrera, M., Benjamins, M. (Accepted, 2023) Cause-Specific Mortality and Racial Differentials in Life Expectancy, Chicago 2018-2019. The Journal of Racial and Ethnic Disparities.
De Los Reyes, W., Ferrera, M. J., Hwang, S., Silva, R. Á., Quarfoot, K., Hasan, N., & Salusky, I. R. (2023). University-Community Collaborations: A Vehicle for Capacity Building and Mutual Learning within an Immigrant Mental Health Coalition. Collaborations: A Journal of Community-Based Research and Practice, pp. 1–10.
Ferrera, M.J., Moody-Freeman, J., Martinez, S., Russo, A., Asis, D., Dino, C. (2023). Healing Justice: Engaging an Ethic of Care in the Academy and Within our Communities. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology.
Shah, R., Ferrera, M.J., Benjamins, M., Carlberg-Racich, S., Tamblyn, E. (2022, September 26). A Sense of Belonging may be the Counterforce Needed Now. Crain’s Chicago Business- Forum on Equitable Health.
Ferrera, M.J. & Crabtree-Nelson, S. (2022). Critical Empowerment Frameworks Paramount to Social Justice Work. Advances in Social Work-Special Issue on Re-Envisioning the Social Work Profession, Education, and Practice.
Ferrera M.J. (2022). Second-Generation Filipina/x/o Americans. SAGE Encyclopedia of Filipina/x/o American Studies.
Ferrera, M. J. & Giri, M. (2022). What Should Count as Best Practices of Forensic Medical and Psychological Evaluations for Children Seeking Asylum? AMA Journal of Ethics, 24(4): E267-274.
Ellis, B., Offidani-Bertrand, C. & Ferrera, M.J. (2022). “No way! Like only Hispanics are illegal”: Examining the Racialized Psychosocial Development of Migrant “Illegality” Across Immigrant Groups in the United States. Journal of Adolescent Research, 1-34.
