My scholarship focuses on promoting family well-being in diverse contexts; strengthening family-serving systems; and centering equity in family research, practice, and policy.
Researcher. Educator. Social Worker.
I am a Research Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work, the Associate Director for Research in the Collaborative for Implementation Practice, and a Family Research and Engagement Specialist in the Jordan Institute for Families at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My scholarship focuses on (a) promoting family well-being in diverse contexts; (b) strengthening family-serving systems; and (c) centering equity in family research, practice, and policy.
My work attends to:
- Families experiencing relationship transitions and shifts in parental structure
- Family maltreatment prevention among military-connected families
- Promoting the use of data and evidence in family-serving systems
- Understanding human and relational factors that support the implementation of effective programs and practices in family-serving systems
- Advocating for inclusive definitions of family
- Centering equity in the theory and methods used to study and support families and family-serving systems
My professional activities are connected to more than 33.6 million dollars in extramural funding, including support from the following sources:
- National Institutes of Health
- United States Department of Health and Human Services
- The Duke Endowment
- William T. Grant Foundation
- The Annie E. Casey Foundation
- North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services
I am a Fellow of the Society of Social Work and Research and a Faculty Fellow of the Carolina Population Center. I am also co-founder and co-chair of the Diverse Family Structures Focus Group of the National Council on Family Relations, which has amassed over 140 scholars across the country and globe who are interested in aligning research, practice, and policy with the complex and rich realities of family relationships.
As an educator, I specialize in delivering graduate-level content related to family dynamics, child development, program evaluation, and advanced quantitative methodology.
Todd Jensen, Ph.D. 