Rate My Professor Zhen Cong

Zhen Cong is Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Sciences in the Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences at Chapman University. She earned a Ph.D. in gerontology from the School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California in 2008, an M.S. in management science and engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2003, and a B.A. from Xi’an Foreign Languages University in 1997. Her career includes serving as Professor and Director of the Climate and Health Initiative in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health from 2023 to 2024, National Institutes of Health Climate and Health Scholar hosted by the National Institute on Aging in 2023, Associate Professor, Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs, and Ph.D. Program Director in the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Arlington from 2018 to 2022, and Assistant Professor and Associate Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Texas Tech University from 2008 to 2018.

Her research employs convergent integrated frameworks to investigate older adults’ vulnerability and resilience to disasters, community resilience, and social, health, and environmental disparities associated with disasters, particularly hurricanes and tornadoes, addressing exposure to risks, risk perception and communication, access to warnings, mitigation behaviors, and recovery processes. She has received funding as principal investigator and co-principal investigator from the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Standards and Technology, including a 2025 NSF grant for hurricane preparedness research. Select publications include “Intergenerational transfers and living arrangements of older people in rural China: Consequences for psychological well-being” (Silverstein, Cong, & Li, 2006, Journals of Gerontology Series B, 949 citations), “Intergenerational support and depression among elders in rural China: Do daughters-in-law matter?” (Cong & Silverstein, 2008, Journal of Marriage and Family, 263 citations), “Disaster Exposure and Patterns of Disaster Preparedness: A Multilevel Social Vulnerability and Engagement Perspective” (Cong, Feng, & Chen, 2023, Journal of Environmental Management), and “Children’s Divorce and their Financial Support to Older Parents in Rural China” (Cong et al., 2023, Research on Aging). Zhen Cong is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America since 2019 and serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences and Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Marriage and Family and Research on Aging. She is a member of the National Academies Committee on State-of-the-Science and the Future of Cumulative Impact Assessment.