Melissa Meinhart, MSW

Ms. Meinhart is a doctoral candidate at CSSW and the Project Director for ASPIRE. Her research interests include measurement and intervention modalities in the context of forced migration, with a substantive focus how social norms, social support, and social networks influence gendered outcomes of resilience and health. Her career in social work began while working with streetchildren in Ghana. After returning to the United States, she was a caseworker and direct-practice researcher for refugee resettlement before focusing her attention on issues related to gender-based violence in emergencies – whereby the countries of focus included Chad, Pakistan, Philippines, Somalia, and South Sudan. Ms. Meinhart has since worked in research, monitoring, and evaluation within Kenya, Somalia, South Africa, Zambia, and Iraq. Her dissertation incorporates structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the role of social support among urban migrants.