The Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative (GCSWI), which is spearheaded by the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW), represents a major endeavor for the entire field of social work. GCSWI calls for bold innovation and collective action powered by proven and evolving scientific interventions to address critical social issues facing society. The purpose of GCSWI was modeled after the National Academy of Engineering, which aimed to identify some of the most persistent engineering problems of the day and then put the attentions, energies, and funding of the entire field to work on them for a decade. The GCSWI does the same for social issues, tackling problems such as homelessness, social isolation, mass incarceration, family violence, and economic inequality.

Grand Challenges for Social Work and Society is an edited book that will present the foundations of the GCSWI, laying out the start of the initiative and providing summaries of each of the twelve challenges. The 12 main chapters that form the core of the book, one on each of the dozen Grand Challenges, are written by the primary research teams who are driving each GC project.