My scholarship focuses on promoting youth well-being in the context of family structural transitions, preventing maltreatment among military-connected youth and their families, and strengthening youth-serving systems.
Researcher. Educator. Social Worker.
I am an Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Science and the Director of the Thriving Through Family Transitions (THRIFT) Research Lab in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I also am a Faculty Fellow of the Carolina Population Center. My scholarship is driven by the proposition that all youth deserve to experience healthy development and well-being across the life course; the three interconnected pillars of my work attend to several levels of youth’s social ecology and context.
First, my research aims to identify malleable family processes that promote youth development and well-being in the context of family structural transitions, such as when parental figures enter or exit youth’s primary residence. I am interested particularly in understanding how to leverage youths’ connection to new stepparents or social parents as a unique developmental asset.
Second, my research focuses on promoting well-being and preventing various forms of maltreatment among military-connected youth and their families.
Third, my research seeks to identify interpersonal processes that optimize the efforts of teams to sustainably implement health-promoting and evidence-informed interventions in youth-serving systems.
My professional activities are connected to more than 34 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
My research has been featured by The Atlantic, The New York Times, BBC, and the Child Trends News Service. I am a Fellow of the Society for Social Work and Research, Deputy Editor for the Journal of Family Theory & Review, and co-founder and co-chair of the Diverse Family Structures Focus Group of the National Council on Family Relations. As an educator, I specialize in teaching courses on family dynamics and theory, human development, program evaluation, and advanced quantitative methodology.
Todd Jensen, Ph.D. 