OUR STUDENTS AND ALUMNI

By Catherine Donnelly

Kathy Lisborg, DSW ’22, MSW ’14, did not plan to become a social worker.

She started her college career at the Fashion Institute of Technology before realizing that a retail career was not for her.

“I went from a rural-ish suburb to Manhattan and realized I did not like the ‘big’ city. I returned to Syracuse and eventually transferred to UB, where I knew I could find challenging classes and be closer to home,” she says.

Lisborg graduated with her bachelor’s degree, became a real estate paralegal and remained in that field for several years until her firm closed.

“I had already considered changing careers when the firm closed down and I lost my job. I completed two electives in the School of Social Work and felt a real connection with it. I applied to the MSW program and loved it once I started,” she continues.

Her field experiences were with Hospice’s bereavement program and the Catholic Charities Marriage Counseling Center. When she graduated, she returned to Hospice Buffalo before moving to Horizon Health Services in Niagara Falls.

“All my experiences pushed me to become a better therapist. One memorable encounter at Hospice was with a young girl who was losing a parent. She said she looked up to me. I thought she meant literally because I was taller, but she meant she wanted to grow up and help kids too,” she says. “It was inspiring.”

Lisborg decided to return to UB for her Doctor of Social Work degree, eventually focusing on implementation science, which aims to reduce the gap between health care research and treatment. For example, if researchers develop a new therapy for diabetes and studies show it works, it can take 17-20 years for that new option to become the standard of care.

“Generally, humans do not adopt new things quickly. We are creatures of habit and don’t like change. That spreads to the organizations where we work,” she says. “Implementation science has tools that help make change sticky.

“The field spoke to so many parts of my heart and my brain,” she continues. “It has a wonderful combination of nerdiness and creativity that energizes me.”

For her DSW capstone project, she focused on trauma-informed documentation, working with the Canadian Mental Health Association to improve the way staff document client interactions and reduce redundancies in electronic health records.

“Documentation and trauma-informed care might not seem like things that go together, but the way we talk about our clients is so important. Language can increase or reduce stigma. I don’t just mean how we talk with our clients, but also how we talk with our colleagues.”

After graduation, Lisborg even developed a class about implementation science for the School of Social Work.

“As far as I can tell, the class I teach — Disseminating, Spreading/Scaling and Sustaining Interventions — does not exist anywhere else,” she explains. “UB social workers often become leaders. They need to understand how to drive change in their organizations to improve the quality of care for their clients, and implementation science can help them do that. Another important element in my class is to increase thinking about how to infuse implementation science with justice, equity, diversity, inclusion and trauma-informed care principles.”

Working with students is a gift but not how Lisborg spends most of her time. She also is a senior project associate for EDC Solutions in the Zero Suicide Institute and a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) in private practice.

“At the Zero Suicide Institute, we believe that suicide deaths for individuals under the care of health professionals and behavioral health systems are preventable,” she says. “Our approach guides organizational change using the Zero Suicide framework. We work with different kinds of organizations that want to eliminate suicide deaths and improve patient safety.”

Lisborg encourages everyone to follow their passions and never stop learning and growing.

“I love to try new things and discovered Queen City Roller Derby when I lived in Buffalo. When I joined, I thought I might be able to survive a season. One season became nine where I played, coached and refereed. It’s a great sport!”