Rate My Professor Jennifer Robinette

A health psychologist, Dr. Robinette examines health and development through a social ecological lens, focusing on how residential neighborhood contexts shape mental, physical, and cognitive health outcomes across the lifespan. She investigates neighborhood hazards, resources, and individual characteristics, informed by psychology, demography, social epidemiology, and social genomics, using data from the Midlife in the United States survey and Health and Retirement Study. Core research areas include gene-environment interplay, neighborhood adversity and sensitivity to stress, cardiovascular health, adolescent health, socioeconomic status and health, neighborhood cohesion and mental health, cognition in context, and cardiometabolic risk. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship from 2010 to 2013 on associations between neighborhood income and daily stressors, and the National Institute on Aging Multidisciplinary Research in Aging Training Grant from 2015 to 2017. Other honors include UC Irvine Psychology and Social Behavior Mentoring Awards in 2013 and 2014, Gerontological Society of America Travel Award in 2013, Alison Clarke-Stewart Excellence in Research Award in 2011, UC Irvine Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship in 2014, and various graduate fellowships. Key publications feature Robinette et al. (2018), 'Neighborhood cohesion, neighborhood disorder, and cardiometabolic risk,' Social Science & Medicine; Robinette et al. (2017), 'Neighborhood socioeconomic status and health: A longitudinal analysis,' Journal of Community Health; Robinette et al. (2025), 'Accelerated molecular aging in neighborhood poverty: A racial/ethnic comparison,' Health & Place; and Robinette et al. (2025), 'Perceived neighborhood cohesion and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic,' Journal of Health Psychology. Dr. Robinette serves as ad hoc reviewer for journals including Social Science & Medicine, Health & Place, and The Journals of Gerontology Series B, and has contributed to university committees such as faculty searches and undergraduate research fellowships at Chapman University.