Shirley Johnson, BA, LSW

Ms. Johnson is a licensed social worker where her areas of expertise include mental health, child welfare, working with individuals with disabilities and fourteen years of experience in advocacy and care for patients with Sickle Cell Disease. Although her recent career is in project management, training, and development, Ms. Johnson led the charge in a foundation-funded transition program at Virginia Commonwealth University for patients with Sickle Cell Disease age 15 to 21. Ms. Johnson’s transition program received state-wide and national exposure leading to expertise recognition and program highlights at local, state level and national conferences and a transition tool she co-development is used to assess patient care(TIP-RFT) nationally in identifying barriers to transition.

Ms. Johnson has managed an NIH grant awarded to explore the use of Patient Navigators for improving the adherence of medication compliance in Sickle Cell Disease (SHiP-HU, R18HL112737). Ms. Johnson was also the lead developer of a workshop on Community Health Workers and their impact on chronic disease at the 10th annual FSCDR conference and has also co-facilitated a four day training the past four years, SCCAPE (Sickle Cell Care Coordination to Achieve Patient Empowerment) training multi-state staff on the impact of health navigators to patients with SCD. Additionally, Ms. Johnson was invited by the American Society of Hematology (ASH) and the co-directors of the ASH Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) Centers Workshop to serve as a faculty for their workshops and also is a member of the National Alliance for Sickle Cell Centers(NASCC), where she lends her expertise in developing a social work national curriculum for NASCC centers. She is the senior author on a pending white paper describing the roles of social workers and their impact on sickle cell patients.

Since 2018, Ms. Johnson is in charge of managing a Sickle Cell Disease Patient-Centered Medical Home that was approved and initiated at Virginia Commonwealth University. This program focuses on improving care, quality of life and safety of patients, while reducing utilization and cost to the healthcare system by using a team approach and Multidisciplinary Adult Care and Instrumental Support (MAIS) methods. She has been a co-author on several peer-reviewed publications with the most recent being in the Journal of Continuing Health Education Professionals titled ”Development of a Framework to Describe Functions and Practice of Community Health Workers.

Ms. Johnson’s expertise and experience also includes service to industry:

Novartis - Consulting
Pfizer - Consulting