Previous SOGIE Award Winners

2024 SOGIE Scholarship Award

The 2024 recipients of the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) Scholarship Award are: Vern Harner PhD, Megan Moore PhD, Boi Casillas BASW, CNA, Jess Chrivoli, MSW, Amaranta Olivares MSW, LSWAIC, and Erin Harrop PhD, LICSW.   

Their award-winning paper is titled, " Transgender Patient Preferences When Discussing Gender in Health Care Settings."

Vern Harner, PhD
University of Washington - Tacoma, School of Scoial Work and Criminal Justice

Vern Harner is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work and Criminal Justice at UW-Tacoma. As a community-embedded activist, organizer, and scholar, their work aims to amplify existing strengths within trans and multiply marginalized communities. Employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, Dr. Harner’s current work focuses on intracommunity support, engagement with social and health services, as well as quality of life of trans communities. Aligning with their research values, Dr. Harner brings accessibility and social justice centered pedagogy to a variety of classroom spaces, including social work history, research methods, and LGBTQ practice. Dr. Harner is affiliate faculty at the Harborview Injury & Prevention Research Center and Co-Chair of the LGBTQ Caucus of Social Work Students & Faculty. When not working, they enjoy crocheting, befriending crows, and taking slow walks around the block with their rescue dog, Rook.

Boi Casilla, MSW, CNA

Boi is a QTPOC person from the midwest of the United States. They center relational ways of knowing in their work and research. Cease fire now.

 

Jess Chrivoli, MSW
University of Washington

Jess Chrivoli is a community organizer, multidisciplinary artist, consultant,
and facilitator. They received their MSW with a specialization in Community-Centered Integrative Practice from the University of Washington, where they now teach as an adjunct instructor on disability and anti-ableist practice. They also hold a Bachelor's in Health Psychology with a focus on Public Health and Social Advocacy from Bastyr University. Jess is passionate about advancing liberation and thrivance for and with their Indigenous, 2SLGBTQIA+, Disabled, Neurodivergent, and d/Deaf communities. In healthcare, they focus on uplifting community care models that subvert and minimize reliance on the Medical Industrial Complex and other oppressive state systems. Recognizing the concurrent need for reform and harm reduction within the current system, Jess is honored to have been part of this research team.
 

Erin Harrop, PhD, LICSW
University Of Denver

Erin Harrop (they/them), LICSW, PhD is an assistant professor at University of Denver and a licensed medical social worker. Erin’s research focuses on eating disorders, weight stigma, and inclusive healthcare. Erin centers marginalized populations (e.g., queer, trans, higher weight, lower SES, BIPOC communities), incorporating mixed methods, arts-based, and lived experience research. In addition to studying the impact of stigma on these groups, Erin is also investigating interventions to reduce stigma (internalized and externalized). They recently received funding to evaluate a weight-inclusive support group protocol for patients with eating disorders in a randomized wait-list controlled trial. Additionally, they also design and evaluate interventions targeting stigma at the health care provider level, introducing interprofessional clinicians to weight-inclusive practices that honor patients’ unique intersecting identities.

Amarnta Lopez Olivares, MSW, LSWAIC

Amaranta (they/she) is a Master of Social Work graduate from University of Washington. They are currently a Social Worker at Seattle Children’s Hospital. They also have experience doing community based research with Seattle Foundation, mentoring undergraduate students at UW, and providing therapy to youth in community and school settings. They are overall interested in what wellness looks like and can look like for people who face oppression and abuse.
 

Megan Moore, PhD, MSW

University of Washington, School of Social Work

Megan Moore, PhD, MSW is Sidney Miller Endowed Associate Professor in Direct Practice in the School of Social Work and Interim Director at the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center at the University of Washington. She is a clinical social worker with a background in Emergency Department social work, Critical Care, and outpatient mental health services for victims of violent crime and other trauma. Her interdisciplinary research agenda is focused on health equity and improving health and mental health outcomes for persons who experience injury and violence.

2023 Award Recipients 

Utilization of Recommended Preventive Health Screenings Between Transgender and Cisgender Older Adults in Sexual and Gender Minority Communities

Charles P. Hoy-Ellis, PhD, MSW, LICSW, is a clinician-researcher with more than 2 decades of experience providing clinical social work services to the LGBTQ+ community. His scholarship focuses on the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ individuals, families, and communities, particularly midlife and older adults. He seeks to develop, implement, and evaluate culturally sensitive interventions that address the social determinants of health disparities among marginalized communities, physical, mental, and social. He also has more than a decade of experience as an educator, teaching reflexive social work practice and advanced social work practice with older adults. He currently serves as the Training Coordinator for the translational research unit of the Goldsen Institute, the AgePride Center, which provides trainings on best practices for providing culturally responsive, evidence-based care for LGBTQ+ older adults. As a Research Scientist, Dr. Hoy-Ellis also directs the intervention research unit of the Goldsen Institute—Interventions for Underserved Communities (IDEA). Based on findings from the federally funded ongoing longitudinal Aging With Pride: National Health, Aging, and Sexuality/Gender Study, the basic science research unit of the Goldsen Institute, Dr. Hoy-Ellis is currently focused on piloting randomized control trial interventions for LGBTQ+ older adults experiencing dementia— Innovations in Dementia Empowerment and Action (IDEA). 


Karen Fredriksen-Goldsen, PhD, is Professor and Director of the Goldsen Institute at the University of Washington, School of Social Work. Professor Fredriksen-Goldsen is a nationally and internationally recognized scholar addressing health equity, disparities, resilience, aging, and well-being among underserved populations. She is the principal investigator of many landmark studies, including Aging With Pride (R01): National Health, Aging, and Sexuality/Gender Study (NHAS), the first federally-funded longitudinal study of LGBTQ midlife and older adults; Innovations in Dementia Empowerment and Action (IDEA, R01), Wellness With Pride, and Global Pride Study as well as multiple other funded studies that identify factors accounting for health trajectories and longevity to create innovative solutions to complex social issues. Dr. Fredriksen Goldsen is the author of six books and special issues and more than 100 publications in leading journals. Her research has been cited by top news sources such as the New York Times, Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, CNN, NBC News, and more than 75 international news outlets. Based on the ground-breaking nature of her work, she has received many awards, including the inaugural National Institutes of Health’s Sexual & Gender Minority Distinguished Investigator Award, PBS’s Next Avenue’s inaugural Top 50 Influencers in Aging, Gerontological Society of America’s Maxwell A. Pollack Award for Healthy Aging, and the UW-wide Distinguished Teaching Award. She is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare. 


Hyun-Jun Kim, PhD is a research assistant professor at the School of Social Work, University of Washington, serving as the director of Health and Wellness Research at the School’s Goldsen Institute. Dr. Kim’s primary research interests center around health and social inequities faced by disadvantaged older adults, including examining disparities in physical, mental, and cognitive health and quality of life, the intersectionality of sexuality, gender, race, and ethnicity, and the roles of social exclusion, social isolation, and support networks as risk and protective factors. He also aims to translate findings to develop and implement interventions designed to improve health and well-being of historically and socially marginalized populations. He has served as co-investigator of multiple landmark studies including Aging With Pride: National Health, Aging, and Sexuality/Gender Study (NHAS) and Innovations in Dementia, Empowerment and Action (IDEA), funded by the National Institutes of Health and National Institute on Aging. He has served as Multiple PI on Care Network-IDEA, pilot-testing an intervention to improve quality of life for LGBTQ+ older adults experiencing memory loss without a caregiver. Currently, he is also researching variations in social isolation and social and kin relations among older adults by sexuality, gender, race, and ethnicity and how they are associated with healthcare access and cognitive health interplaying with social exclusion, stress, and other health-promoting and adverse factors.