Saira Afzal
Saira Rabia Afzal is a PhD Candidate at the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research of Bryn Mawr College. Her research centers on developing and implementing youth suicide prevention and intervention strategies, with particular focus on marginalized populations. She is committed to improving access to mental health care services for youth and ensuring that these services are delivered in effective and culturally responsive ways. She is interested in utilizing mixed methods to investigate the complex nature of youth suicide and its impact on youth, families, and communities.
Afzal’s scholarship is informed by both her lived experiences and her decade of experience as a social work clinician in pediatric healthcare, including her observations of significant gaps in the service delivery system following youth mental health crises.
Afzal is a member of the Health Policy Research Scholar program, a leadership program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focused on health policy and building a culture of health. She is a proud member of HPRS, and she centers her work on the belief that healthcare is a human right.
She received her BA in Political Science with a Journalism minor from Stony Brook University, and her MSW in 2015 from Columbia University. She completed a post-graduate fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital in 2016 where she honed her skills in clinical assessment and research.