Stephanie Robert
Ph.D.
Associate Director

Associate Professor; Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1996. Associate Director, School of Social Work. Affiliated faculty with the Population Health Sciences Department, UW School of Medicine and Public Health. Co-Director, RWJ Health & Society Scholars Program. Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1996. Interests: aging and health; socioeconomic status and health, neighborhood context and health and well-being; health and long-term care policy. Current research: neighborhood factors that affect health and well-being of older adults; public opinion on the role of social and economic factors in health and health disparities.

Contact Information

University of Wisconsin, Madison - Social Work
312 School of Social Work
1350 University Avenue
Madison, WI 53706
Phone: 26
Fax: 263-3836
Email: sarobert@wisc.edu

Education

University of Vermont, BA, 1988
University of Michigan, MSW, 1993
University of Michigan, PhD, Sociology and Social Work, 1996

Research Interests

Dr. Robert is interested in social and economic determinants of health and well-being over the life course. How do factors such as education, income, poverty, stress, and social support affect physical and mental health over the life course? She is particular interested in how neighborhood socioeconomic and racial context contribute to health. What aspects of the neighborhood environment impact the health and well-being of its residents? In addition, Dr. Robert is interested in evaluating the health impact of social policy. Moreover, she is interested in examining how to move the general public and policy makers to understand the health and mental health implications of social and economic policy.

Dr. Robert also studies long-term care policies and programs, particularly home and community-based long-term care policies and programs. She has been studying Family Care, Wisconsin?s pilot program that uses a managed care approach to financing and delivering support services to people with physical disabilities. She is also interested in a variety of topics related to home- and community-based long-term care, such as the gendered nature of caregiving, socioeconomic implications of caregiving, and the creation of consumer-directed and consumer-centered care.

Current Research Projects

Project Title: ?Community context and health over the life course?
Role on Project: Principal Investigator
Funding Agency: NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research and National Institute on Aging.
Goal of Project: To examine how individual and neighborhood socioeconomic factors impact health and well-being over the adult life course. To examine how racial neighborhood context impacts health and well-being.

Project Title: ?Norms and Performance Comparisons for 5 Health Indexes?
Role on Project: Senior Investigator
Funding Agency: National Institute of Aging
Goal of Project: To examine five different health-related quality of life indexes, and determine their similarities and differences across subgroups, such as by age, race, and socioeconomic status. To examine racial and socioeconomic variations in health-related quality of life.

Project Title: ?Wisconsin Population Health and Disparities Survey.?
Role on Project: Principal Investigator
Funding Agency: UW-Madison RWJ Health & Society Research Fund
Goal of Project: To examine the opinions of Wisconsin adults regarding issues of social and economic determinants of health and health disparities. To examine opinions regarding the interventions to improve health that Wisconsin adults would support.

Selected Publications

Robert, Stephanie A. 1998. ?Community-level socioeconomic status effects on adult health.? Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 39, 18-37.

Robert, Stephanie A. 1999. ?Socioeconomic position and health: The independent contribution of community context.? Annual Review of Sociology, 25, 489-516.

Robert, Stephanie A. and James S. House. 2000. ?Socioeconomic inequalities in health: Integrating individual-, community-, and societal-level theory and research.? Handbook of Social Studies in Health and Medicine, Gary L. Albrecht, Ray Fitzpatrick, and Susan C. Scrimshaw (Eds.), London: Sage Publications, pp. 115-135.

Robert, Stephanie A. and James S. House. 2000. ?Socioeconomic inequalities in health: An enduring sociological problem.? In Handbook of Medical Sociology, Chloe E. Bird, Peter Conrad, and Allen M. Fremont (Eds.). Prentice Hall, 5th Edition, 2000.

Boardman, Jason and Stephanie A. Robert. 2000. ?Neighborhood-Level Socio-Economic Status and Perceptions of Self-Efficacy.? Sociological Perspectives, 43(1), 117-36.

Robert, Stephanie A. and Lydia Li. 2001. ?Age variation in the relationship between neighborhood socioeconomic context and adult health.? Research on Aging, 23(2), 234-58.

Robert, Stephanie A. 2002. ?Community context and aging: Future research issues.? Research on Aging, 24(6):579-99.

Robert, Stephanie A. and Kum Yi Lee. 2002. ?Explaining race differences in health among older adults: The contribution of community socioeconomic context.? Research on Aging, 24(6):654-83.

Robert, Stephanie A. 2003. ?Home and community-based long-term care policies and programs: The crucial role for social work practitioners and researchers in evaluation.? In Barbara Berkman and Linda Harootyan, Eds. Social Work and Health Care in an Aging World: Informing Education, Policy, Practice, and Research. New York: Springer Publications.

Mullahy, John, Stephanie Robert, and Barbara Wolfe. 2004. ?Health, Income, and Inequality: Review and redirection.? In Kathryn Neckerman, Ed. Social Inequality, Second Edition. NY: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 523-44.

Robert, Stephanie A., Indiana Strombom, Amy Trentham-Dietz, John M. Hampton, Jane A. McElroy, Polly A. Newcomb, and Patrick L. Remington. 2004. ?Socioeconomic risk factors for breast cancer: Distinguishing individual- and community-level effects.? Epidemiology, 15(4):442-50.

Robert, Stephanie A. and Eric N. Reither. 2004. ?A multilevel analysis of race, community disadvantage, and BMI.? Social Science & Medicine, 59(12):2421-34.

Robert, Stephanie A. and Erin Ruel. 2006. ?Racial segregation and health disparities between black and white older adults.? Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 61B(4):S203-
211.