Findings from the Human Genome Project (HGP) suggest that tremendous opportunities exist for increased life expectancies and improved quality of life. The findings also raise enormous concerns about ethical, legal, and psychosocial implications, particularly for underrepresented and vulnerable populations. This article proposes an education model that focuses on genetically informed, ethical practice that will help social worker practitioners and educators play a more effective role as they confront the many implications of genetic and genomic research in the 21st century.

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The integration of the human genome with the African personality should be viewed as an interdependent whole. The African personality, for purposes of this article, comprises Black experiences, Negritude, and an Africa-centered axiology and epistemology. The outcome results in a spiritual focused collective consciousness. Anthropologically, historically (and with the Human Genome Project), genetically Africa has proven to be the source of all human life. Human kind wherever they exist on the planet using the African personality must be viewed as interconnected. Although racism and its progeny discrimination preexist the human genome project (HGP), the human genome provides an evidence-based rationale for the end to all policy and subsequent practice based on race and racism. Policy must be based on evidence to be competent practice. It would be remiss if not irresponsible of social work and the other behavioral scientist concerned with intervention and prevention behaviors to not infuse the findings of the HCPs. The African personality is a concept that provides a wholistic way to evaluate human behavior from an African worldview.

African centered family healing posits an alternative paradigm that can be used as a model for family healing. Effective intervention begins with the recognition that what we have been doing has not been working for African American families (Boyd-Franklin, 1989; Kambon, 1998; Logan, Freeman and McRoy, 1990; Owusu-Bempah, 1999; and Weaver, 1992). Social work intervention efforts must integrate mental health constructs that exist in the communities we are attempting to serve. One such concept is communal knowledge. Another such concept is communal values. When one joins communal knowledge and values, one begins to restructure the understanding of mental health in the African American family. The family unit must be viewed as interdependent. This understanding is requisite to family healing. It is therefore necessary that we change our thinking and then our actions. This article posits that social workers must become social healers.

This 1999 research analyzed selected descriptive variables for consumers with significant disabilities, who were successfully employed. The goal was to investigate employment outcomes for consumers whose cases were closed as successfully employed. Human capital theory provided the theoretical underpinnings for evaluating the findings. This study empirically assessed factors which contributed to increased weekly earnings for consumers of state vocational rehabilitation services with severe disabilities. The variables included in this study were weekly earnings at closure, correlated with year last employed, highest grade completed, and birth year. The study found that 17.2% of variability in weekly earnings of the significantly disabled consumers can be predicted by these variables. Education, age, and work experience were found to be predictors of potential earning power. These findings can be used to provide the foundation for the development of reliable program evaluation as well as clinical interventions. This study links outcomes to the services provided. It further provides the data necessary to support policy development in the areas of rehabilitation and welfare reform.