Meet Cory R. Cummings, Ph.D. candidate
Cory R. Cummings is a doctoral candidate at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Social Work. His research interests aim to promote health equity for people who experience serious mental illness and to improve opportunities to pursue health and wellness in their lives. Strategies to accomplish this focus on health promotion interventions that engage and empower the peer support community by cultivating a richer understanding of wellness and using community-based research strategies to create environments that promote wellness.
Cummings’ dissertation research is a case study examination of key mechanisms that drive community-based participatory research efforts in a local health promotion initiative. This initiative has grown out of collaboration with peer provider organizations. Future efforts will aim to incorporate these findings into other capacity-building initiatives supporting greater health equity.
Cummings has teaching experience in the VCU School of Social Work B.S.W. and M.S.W. programs, including the hybrid M.S.W. program distance-education format. His teaching interests include direct practice and methods, social justice and human diversity, human behavior and the social environment, clinical practice in community mental health, health and social work, and research. Cummings also has practice experience in community mental health settings in both clinical and administrative roles.
In the classroom and through his scholarship, he seeks to promote critical reasoning, reflexive practice and transformative action. His work is informed by critical, ecosocial and empowerment theories; a social constructionist perspective; and an understanding of health and wellness that is grounded in the social determinants of health framework.
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