Sarah Brothers, assistant professor of sociology and public policy at Penn State, is the recipient of the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) inaugural Early Career Award for Community-Engaged Scholarship.
The organization recognized Brothers for her “transformative work in drug policy” and incorporating the expertise of marginalized populations in her research. The award’s selection committee referred to her as “a field-defining scholar whose work does not merely study vulnerable communities but is fundamentally governed by them.”
ASA lauded Brothers for the real-world impacts of her work, noting her research on methadone-treatment barriers during the COVID-19 pandemic helped lead to treatment flexibilities made during that period permanent. The organization also cited her 2024 presentation on the Community-Driven Research (CDR) model at the National Academies workshop, held at the request of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, and her consulting work with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
“By building an ethical infrastructure for sociology that is as rigorous as it is just, Dr. Brothers has transformed the role of the researcher from a distant observer to a collaborative architect of social change,” the award selection committee wrote. “In honoring her, the ASA recognizes her visionary start to a career of profound impact.”
“I'm deeply honored, especially as an inaugural recipient,” Brothers said. “Community-engaged scholarship means I am one part of the whole. This recognition belongs to my collaborators — especially the great people I’ve worked with at the National Survivors Union (NSU) — as much as it belongs to me. I'm grateful to the ASA for recognizing this kind of work.”
Brothers’ scholarship examines how vulnerable groups, particularly people who use drugs and those experiencing homelessness, navigate and protect themselves from systems that cause harm. The people closest to these issues hold critical knowledge that doesn’t always reach researchers and policymakers, she said.
She said her community-engaged research grew out of the ethnographic fieldwork she conducted in San Francisco for her forthcoming book, “Hit Doctors: Care, Harm, and the Art of Survival” (University of California Press), which details the uncredentialed expertise of people who provide critical injection assistance to drug users. From the start, she said, her participants have served as collaborators, “keeping me safe, giving me careful feedback on my findings and supporting my project.”
Brothers’ collaboration with NSU on the CDR model took shape from that experience. Several of her collaborators have served as co-authors or lead authors on articles published in peer-reviewed journals such as Sociological Methodology, the American Journal of Public Health, and the Harm Reduction Journal.
“I collaborated on the CDR project with NSU because I thought it essential to develop non-extractive approaches to sharing the knowledge held by organizations led by and for the vulnerable communities they serve,” Brothers said. “I admire the bravery and strength of my collaborators, who were researching and writing on the very issues that were putting them and people they cared for at risk of harm and death. Any impact from findings on methadone- treatment barriers was possible because NSU members identified the questions and shaped how we answered them.”
Brothers serves as co-funded faculty for Penn State’s Social Science Research Institute, and affiliated faculty for the Rock Ethics Institute, the Consortium on Substance Use and Addiction, the Population Research Institute, and the Community-Engaged Research, Action, and Partnerships unit. She said her work wouldn’t be possible without funding, research assistance and feedback from these entities, as well as the continuing support of her community partners.
“I am continuing to develop this work with members of community advisory boards and through my ongoing collaborations with organizations in New York City who consistently remind me to center the people we intend to help,” she said.