Robyn L. Golden to Receive the National Association of Social Workers Foundation Knee/Wittman Outstanding Achievement Award

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Association of Social Workers Foundation (NASWF) is pleased to announce that social worker Robyn L. Golden, MA, LCSW, ACSW, will receive the 2025 Knee/Wittman Outstanding Achievement Award for her contributions in advancing health and mental health policies that invest in high-quality, whole-person care.

Established in 1990, this award honors social work practitioners who share the values, ethics and approaches of the award’s namesakes: Ruth Knee (1920–2008) and Milton Wittman (1915–1994), who were both trailblazers in the mental health field.

Golden has been recognized for redefining how social care is integrated into the health care system. She has helped others understand the variety of ways Medicare can be leveraged in social work.

At Rush University Medical Center, Golden serves as the associate vice president of Social Work and Community Health and has worked at the institution for more than 20 years in various capacities. She has more than 35 years of “transformative experience and has consistently demonstrated exceptional leadership, innovative policy advocacy, and a deep commitment to improving the delivery of care for people and communities,” according to one nomination letter.

Golden is an assistant professor of Medicine, Psychiatry, and Health Systems Management. She also is chair of the Department of Social Work at Rush’s College of Health Sciences, Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

For more than 10 years, Golden has sought clarity on whether Medicare would recognize clinical social workers as independent providers of Health Behavior Assessment and Intervention (HBAI) services.

An NASW Social Work Pioneer® and an active NASW member for 46 years, Golden met with state and federal leaders, including members of Congress, and White House staff, to share how to improve health outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries by including social workers as eligible providers for HBAI and expanding access to services that social workers provide. When Medicare Part B finalized a rule in 2024 recognizing clinical social workers as eligible providers of HBAI, the agency’s chief transformation officer thanked Golden for her efforts.

Robyn serves on the RRF Foundation for Aging and the Health and Medicine Boards of Directors. She was the John Heinz Senate Fellow for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and she is a Past Chair of the American Society on Aging.

Robyn received the Gerontological Society of America's Maxwell A. Pollack Award for Productive Aging and the American Public Health Association’s Insley-Evans Public Health Social Worker of the year award. She founded and chairs the Coalition for Social Work and Health and served as a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee studying the integration of social needs care into the delivery of health care.

She is a National Association of Social Workers—Social Work Pioneer.  And a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare. Robyn holds a master’s degree from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree from Miami University.

We are proud to present this award to her.

See her full bio