Mary Lehman Held

Associate Professor Dr. Held is the Assistant Dean and MSSW Program Director of the Nashville campus at the University of Knoxville, Tennessee. Dr. Held’s scholarship focuses on strengthening knowledge related to risk and protective factors for well-being among immigrant and refugee communities to inform service provision and policymaking. Her work is situated in the current sociopolitical climate of both immigrant-sending nations and the United States. Informed by practice experience in Texas and Central America, Dr. Held designs quantitative and qualitative studies to gain more in-depth insight from Latinx and other immigrant and refugee communities, as well as service providers to assess needs, the capacity to address these needs, and gaps in training for the current and future workforce.