Email: jinyung.kim@ssw.umaryland.edu
Jinyung Kim’s research interests are two-fold, public health in social work and child welfare, including safety, well-being, and permanency. From the public health social work perspective, she is particularly interested in substance use and cyberbullying of the adolescent population and the health disparities of multicultural youths in South Korea. Her dissertation examined the impact of peer network on adolescents’ smoking behavior and dived deeper into the peer influence process, interactions, and dynamics of each sub-networks, which differed by vocational high school students and out-of-school adolescents. However, she was drawn to the areas of child welfare research after engaging with a number of adolescents at out-of-home placements during the data collection of her dissertation. Jinyung learned the ripple effect of an unstable family structure and out-of-home placement on children’s lives, both physically and mentally; therefore, she saw the need to bridge her research gap by addressing the issue of child maltreatment and its association with poverty, the impact of foster care or other forms of out-of-home care on children’s safety and well-being, and child welfare policy and services evaluation methods.
Jinyung received her Ph.D. and MA in social work and BA in international studies with international law and politics as her main concentrations (double major in social work) at Ewha Womans University, South Korea.
Now, Jinyung is working with Dr. Ahn on a number of child welfare evaluation projects, including Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) and Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) efforts across the state of Maryland, and Integrated Practice Model (IPM), to advance her new research career in child welfare policy and practice evaluation.