Rate My Professor Jennifer Robinette

Dr. Jennifer Robinette serves as Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences at Chapman University, a position she has held since September 2019. She earned her Ph.D. in Psychology and Social Behavior from the University of California, Irvine in June 2015, with concentrations in Health Psychology and Quantitative Psychology. Additional degrees include an M.A. in Social Ecology from UCI in 2012 and a B.A. in Psychology from San Diego State University in 2005, where she graduated summa cum laude with a 3.99 GPA. Prior to Chapman, she was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology from July 2015 to August 2019. Her earlier appointments encompass Graduate Student Researcher in the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior at UCI from September 2009 to June 2015, Staff Research Associate in the Pediatric Neurology Research Group at UC San Diego from July 2005 to July 2009, and Research Assistant in the Behavioral Teratology Research Laboratory at San Diego State University from June 2002 to July 2005.

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.