Megan McCoy

Megan C. McCoy is a social work scholar with 22 years of direct practice, non-profit management, and community-based research experience in settings serving older adults. Through both teaching and research, Dr. McCoy addresses the impact of historical institutionalized silences in later life and advances anti-racist and anti-ageist social work practice. Dr. McCoy’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of aging with health equity for LGBTQ+ older adults and the potential for community-based senior centers to function as identity affirming spaces which promote resilience. Through a lens of feminist and critical theory, her research endeavors to understand how macro and micro level processes intersect to construct norms within the social contexts where older adults engage and to illuminate tensions between liberatory and oppressive practices. Prior to joining NAU's Department of Social Work in 2022, Dr. McCoy most recently served as the Director of Grant Research and Development at Center in the Park, a nationally accredited senior community center in Philadelphia, and as an adjunct instructor in Widener University’s online MSW program. Dr. McCoy participated as a team member in advancing Center in the Park’s collaborative academic research partnerships which specifically centered the voices of African American older adults. Through projects ranging from a NIMH funded randomized control trial of a home-based depression intervention, to a feasibility study of an online COVID vaccination education program, to a focus group study to understand older adults’ perspectives on the opioid crisis, Dr. McCoy is an experienced interdisciplinary research team member with expertise in culturally responsive community engagement and outreach.