Photo courtesy of Kimiko Vang
Kimiko Vang, Doctor of Social Work alum, has spent the last two decades working to reduce gaps in health equity for youth and their families in Merced County. As the Director of Merced County’s Behavioral Health and Recovery Services, Vang leads the effort to serve medical-eligible clients with severe mental illnesses and substance use disorders through mental health services at the county’s clinics, outpatient services and inpatient facility. She works to ensure staff have the tools they need to support clients’ needs and partners with other departments to support the most vulnerable individuals throughout the county. Vang credits the DSW’s focus on social innovation for expanding her world view and building her confidence to successfully lead complex organizations that serve a wide variety of constituents.
Vang began her career in child welfare and foster youth care in Stanislaus County after attending California State University, Stanislaus for her MSW. She loved being a resource for children and families and connecting them with support services. However, she shared, “I realized that I could have a more meaningful impact on families and reach a larger part of our community if I moved up into management roles.” She went on to become a Social Work Supervisor and Program Administrator in Child Welfare for Merced County and continued to expand her reach through management and leadership roles.
Exploring Social Innovation & Leadership with USC’s DSW
In 2015, Vang became Deputy Director of Employment and Training Services, expanding her portfolio to include veterans services and staff development. Stepping into this role was the impetus Vang needed to pursue her doctorate. “For a long time, I knew that I wanted to go back to school and pursue some kind of doctoral program, but it just never felt like it was the right time or the right program,” she said. When USC began offering the online DSW program, Vang read feedback from members of the first cohort, and their comments helped her realize that “USC’s DSW was exactly what I needed to support my growth as an executive leader.” She states further, “It had all the right content. Understanding and managing large complex systems was exactly what I was trying to do as the deputy director, and effective financial management was the one area I felt less confident in because I came from a social work background…Learning those skills was essential for me.”
Vang was also very interested in the DSW’s focus on social innovation and the Grand Challenges of Social Work. “Learning about how to apply social innovations in the real world and seeing what those case studies looked like definitely helped me in my daily work,” Vang said. “We are currently working on implementing over 85 different state initiatives. Figuring out at what point we can inject social innovations into these projects, where we can build new partnerships, and considering how to view problems and solutions in different ways has been so valuable to our community and helped me to make a greater impact on the clients we serve.”
Vang emphasized that working with her classmates and hearing the creative ways they tackled problems in their capstone projects expanded her world view and helped her see new, innovative ways for approaching different challenges. When asked about her favorite part of the program, though, Vang shared that “I learned so much from the amazing professors in the DSW program. They are so knowledgeable about so many aspects of the profession, and they are also understanding and supportive. They know that their students also have jobs and family and a life outside of the program.”
Capstone in Action: Addressing the Mental Health Needs of Southeast Asian Youth
During her time in the program, Vang used her capstone project to focus on addressing the mental health needs among Southeast Asian youth, specifically youth in Merced County, where she grew up. “The little data that was available over the last 10-15 years had shown that there was definitely a higher mental health need and a higher rate of suicide and suicidal ideation among this particular population compared to the entire youth population,” Vang shared. She looked at how technology could be leveraged to provide access to mental health services and how to link youth and their families with clinicians who understood their language and cultural considerations. In her project, she built a directory of bilingual clinicians within California and created a training curriculum and referral process to help connect affected youth to these clinicians.
Photo courtesy of Kimiko Vang
A few years after she graduated, Vang was promoted to her current role as the Director of Behavioral Health and Recovery Services. As part of this role, she oversees mental health services for the county and was tasked with managing the community planning process as part of the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA). During this process, the agency interviews stakeholders about mental health needs in the community. They learned that Southeast Asian youth in the area, in particular Hmong youth, were having difficulty accessing services and were experiencing a high level of need for mental health support. “We needed to take a look at what services we could provide for Southeast Asian youth and their families. Basically, I took everything that I had learned from my capstone project to support the organization in providing these services,” she said. Vang was able to expand available services at the Merced County Wellness Center for Youth and create tailored health services for Southeast Asian youth and their families. “This program is very community-based and we are always looking to improve ways to make our services more client-centered and youth-centered,” Vang said. “We want to give these youth the tools and resources they need and empower them to have a voice in developing our youth services and programs.”
During her capstone project, Vang had learned about the significant stigma around mental health in the Southeast Asian community. “It can be difficult for these youth to come to our campus for services because of this stigma. We needed a strategy that was more community-based and so we’re transforming our services to include working with trusted community partners who can help advocate for a more welcoming environment in the community,” she said. Vang noted that they are seeing similar success with this approach in Spanish-speaking Latino communities too.
Community as Care
Vang recognizes the importance of community-based care in her own life as well. Being a doctoral student while working full time in management, she found support in her colleagues and friends. Her family, especially, was key in helping find balance during her doctoral journey. “My mom ended up cooking dinner for us two to three times a week so that I wouldn’t have to worry about dinners. It was super nice. My mom and dad both would stop by and share food and check in. My husband was also super patient. Without the support of my family, I know it would have been much more challenging to juggle it all.”
For those considering the DSW program, Vang shared, “We never go into the DSW by ourselves as just an individual. We take everyone around us with us on this journey. You don’t have to face it alone. Having support around you will make things a lot easier.” She also encourages prospective students to “be open to your own paradigm shift. All of the information that I learned through the DSW vastly expanded my understanding of social work, the systems in which I work, and my own leadership abilities. It made me a better leader and a better person. Staying open to challenges to your worldview and what you know coming into the program will really set you up for success throughout your journey.”
Learn more about the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work’s Online Doctor of Social Work.