Lawson is an interdisciplinary scholar who specializes in child and family well-being—with special interest in innovative institutional designs structured to assist and support vulnerable people who reside in challenging places. Owing to his international, national, and local work with state social service agencies, state departments of education, school systems, and social-health service agencies, Hal is known as an outreach and engagement scholar. His publications, research grants, contracts, and consultations have been distributed across four fields—Education, Social Welfare, Public Health and Kinesiology.

Hal’s work over the past 20 years has turned toward four related priorities: (1) Systems thinking and perspectives; (2) The system of professions (and their companion organizations and policy sectors) as a social determinant of health, well-being, and institutional performance; (3) Imperatives for interdisciplinary research and interprofessional education with particular attention to relations among education, social welfare, and public health; and (4) Workforce research and development, particularly performance adaptation, desirable retention as well as preventable turnover, and secondary traumatic stress. Equity ideals and distributive justice values have been mainstays.