Terry Mizrahi, Ph.D., MSW was a faculty member at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College of the City University of New York for 39 years (1980-2019). She chaired the Community Organization, Planning and Development practice method for several years and created with colleagues a multi-disciplinary undergraduate Community Organizing Minor in Hunter College https://sssw.hunter.cuny.edu/programs/undergraduate-minor-in-community-organizing. She taught community organizing, social policy and health policy. For ten years in the 1990s, she chaired Hunter College’s Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects. In 1982, she and others created the Education Center for Community Organizing (ECCO) through 2006 [ link to ECCO archive] provide support and resources to people working for progressive social change. She was elected President of the National Association of Social Workers from 2000-2003 and was one of the founders of ACOSA (the Association of Community Organization and Social Action (formerly Social Administration) and its Journal of Community Practice (1993). She received her BA is sociology from NYU, MSW from Columbia University and PhD. in Sociology from the University of Virginia.

Since 2013, she has co-chaired the Special Commission to Advance Macro Practice in Social Work (www.acosa.org/specialcommission), and in 2017 she founded and still co-chairs the National Social Work Voter Mobilization Campaign (www.votingissocialwork.org). She served as the elected national President of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) from 2000-2003 and is a founder of ACOSA’s Journal of Community Practice in 1994. In 1994, she represented NASW as the first social worker to be selected as a Health Care Policy Fellow Program in the Dept. of HHS. For many years she represented her fellow social workers on the Metro NY Health Care for All Campaign, working for universal health access and coverage [www.metrohealth.org]

Dr. Mizrahi is co-editor of the upcoming first Encyclopedia of Macro Social Work to be published by Oxford University and NASW Presses in 2022. Prior to that, she was co-editor in chief of the 20th edition of the Encyclopedia of Social Work, a three-volume compilation of social work knowledge and experience which continues online. She co-authored an article on Health Care Reform for that reference work.

She is the author of 5 books and monographs and 70 articles, book chapters, reviews, and manuals. Her areas of research, training and consultation include professional socialization, coalition-building, community organizing practice and health policy. Her book “Getting Rid of Patients: Contradictions in the Socialization of Physicians” (Rutgers University Press, 1986) was a groundbreaking work on the training of internal medicine house staff. She has recently completed a second book published by Rutgers based on a unique longitudinal study of those same physicians for almost forty years titled: “From Residency to Retirement: The Career Tracks of Physicians” published in 2021. [Link to Article]

She also has done extensive research and training on coalition-building and interprofessional collaboration between physicians and social workers and other disciplines and a completed a study on the role of gender and organizing, comparing the perspectives of male and female community organizers. [Link]

Among her recognized honors are the Council on Social Work Education Lifetime Career Award for Service and Leadership in 2019, and two Hunter Presidential Awards, one for Excellence in Applied Research, and one for Leadership and Service. She also received the Career Achievement Award from the Association of Community Organization and Social Action (ACOSA) and was inducted into Columbia University School of Social Work’s Alumni Hall of Fame. She has received the designation as an NASW Pioneer [Link to Article] and the NYS Social Work Educators Association Leader of the Year award.

She completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Israel in 2006 and continues to train and consult with various Israeli academic and professional leaders in social work and related fields. In 1995, she founded and is still a board member of the Child Welfare Organizing Project, a pioneering grassroots organization in NYC founded