Audrey Begun

Audrey L. Begun MSW, PhD
Associate Professor

614-292-1064
begun.5@osu.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Education
PhD - University of Michigan, 1987 - Social Work and the Social Sciences
MSW - University of Michigan, 1978 - Families and Children and Research
BS - University of Michigan, 1976 - Psychology

Teaching Interests
Engaging with Evidence/Research Methods/Program Evaluation at the BSSW and MSW levels;
Human Behavior and Development Across the Lifespan at the BSSW and MSW levels; Family Development Over the Lifespan at the MSW level
Theories and Biological Basis of Addiction at the BSSW level; Integrative Seminar in Substance Abuse and Mental Health at the MSW level
Knowledge Building, Theories of Individual Change, Intervention Research, Research Integrity and Ethics at the PhD level 

As the editor of NIAAA's alcohol curriculum for social work education, and based on her research activities related to social worak education, Dr. Begun has a stong interest in teaching social workers about alcohol and other substances of abuse. In her teaching, Dr. Begun wholeheartedly embraces the biopsychosocial perspective of human behavior and lifespan development principles in the courses that she offfers, and she emphasizes sources of evidence for what social workers apply in practice. Dr. Begun employs a diverse range of teaching strateies that are designed to be responsive to a variety of learning styles and problem solving approaches, and enjoys integrating technology in the learning process.

Research Interests
Dr. Begun's early research and scholarship emphasized the development of sibling relationsips, particuarly among families facing unusual circumstances:development disabilities and out-of-home placement, for example. Moving into prevention and intervention research, Dr. Begun worked for many years with CABHR(now called the Center for Applied Behavioral Health Research) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Helen Bader School of Social Welfare. her work with CABHR included a multi-year CDC- funded community collaboration project to prevent intimate partner violence that also involved developing the Safe-At-Home instrument for assessing readiness to change battering behavior. She also worked along with colleagues on a multi-year investigation of screening and brief motivational interviewing feedback with referral for women reentering the community following a period of incarceration in jail, and assisted colleagues with studiesof combined behavioral and pharmaceutical interventions for individual with alcohol dependence. In addition, shed conducted studeis of the ways that social workd education addresses professionals' training about addiction, including a multi-year NIAAA-funded project of evaluate a national train-the-trainers effort. Since joining Ohio State University College of social Work in 2009, Dr. Begun's research agenda included a collaborative project (Project RISE), along with colleagues and the community's Ohio Associaton of County Behavioral Authoriities, to identify housing, mental health, addiction, and physical health needs of men and women reentering the community following joil or prison incarceration. This project also examined discrepancies between needs and services received, as well s barriers to service identified byt the study participants. In collaboration with a colleague at New York University, she conducted a national survey of social work education in the addictions. Recently, Dr. Begun has been working with colleagues and the the community based Nationwide Children's Hospital to help parents reduce their babies' exposure to second-and-third-hand smoke. Project EMESH (EMpowering Mothers to Establish Smoke-free Homes) will culminate in a menu-driven intervention program utilizing technology for parents to self-assess, become informed, access resouces, and monitor progress toward this goal for their babies who stated life in the hopital's neonatal intensive care unit with breathing vulnerabilities.