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Jungeun Olivia Lee

Assistant Professor of Social Work Department of Children Youth and Families

Jungeun Olivia Lee focuses on the relationship between socioeconomic status and behavioral health, particularly substance use

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Jungeun Olivia Lee
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Curriculum Vitae
Email:  lee363@usc.edu
Phone:  +1 213.740.7822
Rank:  Tenure Track Faculty
Department:  Children, Youth and Families
Assignment:  Ground

Jungeun Olivia Lee

Assistant Professor of Social Work Department of Children Youth and Families

Jungeun Olivia Lee focuses on the relationship between socioeconomic status and behavioral health, particularly substance use

Media Contact

Biography

Jungeun Olivia Lee joined the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work in 2014. Prior to her appointment at USC, she was a research scientist at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work and Social Development Research Group after receiving her doctoral degree in 2009. Her area of expertise seeks to disentangle a complex relationship between socioeconomic status and behavioral health, particularly substance use, during one’s life course and across generations. Conceptually anchored in life course perspective, Lee’s current work focuses on 1) the impact of socioeconomic status—such as unemployment, education and neighborhood deprivation—on problematic substance use and 2) the impact of maternal substance use and socioeconomic status on offspring’s behavior. Lee is currently leading the 20-year longitudinal Young Women and Child Development Study, which will examine an extensive range of life-course pathway factors, such as behavioral health, substance use, mental health, physical health, and correlates for both teen mothers and children. She is also the lead investigator at the USC site of a multi-campus consortium that seeks to understand substance use, campus intimate partner violence, and help-seeking behaviors among college students. In addition, Lee is a consultant on a grant funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse to lead multiple papers investigating the link between socioeconomic status and substance use among young adults and the role of childhood individual and neighborhood disadvantages in the link. She is a member of the Society for Social Work and Research and the Society for Prevention Research. Lee has served as a reviewer for multiple journals including Addiction, Addictive Behaviors, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, American Journal of Public Health, Child Development, Developmental Psychology, and Journal of Society for Social Work and Research. Lee is interested in quantitative methodology for longitudinal data and has expertise in four general areas of advanced statistics, including mixture modeling (often referred to as the “person-centered approach”), structural equation modeling, categorical data analysis and techniques for handling missing data.

Education

University of Washington

PhD 2009

University of Wisconsin-Madison

MSW 2003

Seoul National University

MA 2000

Catholic University of Korea

BA 1997

Area of Expertise

  • Behavioral Health
  • Substance abuse treatment
  • Social Work Education
  • Social Work
  • Substance Abuse
  • Class

Industry Experience

  • Social Services
  • Health and Wellness
  • Education/Learning
  • Research

Research Interest

  • Mental Health
  • Substance Abuse

Accomplishments

Graduate School Social Sciences Dissertation Fellowship, University of Washington, Seattle
2008

Articles & Publications

Unemployment And Substance Use Problems Among Young Adults: Does Childhood Low Socioeconomic Status Exacerbate The Effect? | Social Science & Medicine
Lee, Jungeun Olivia, Karl G. Hill, Lacey A. Hartigan, Joseph M. Boden, Katarina Guttmannova, Rick Kosterman, Jennifer A. Bailey, and Richard F. Catalano
2015 The current study tested whether unemployment predicted young adults' heavy episodic drinking, cigarette smoking, and cannabis use after taking into account individual development in substance use. Furthermore, building on the life course perspective, this study examined whether the link between unemployment and substance use among young adults differed for those who experienced low childhood SES compared to those who did not. Data for the present study came from the Seattle Social Development Project (SSDP), a panel study examining a broad range of developmental outcomes from ages 10 to 33...

Does Child Maltreatment Predict Adult Crime? Reexamining the Question in a Prospective Study of Gender Differences, Education, and Marital Status | Journal of Interpersonal Violence
Journal of Interpersonal Violence
2014 Bivariate analyses of adult crime and child maltreatment showed that individuals who had been maltreated as children, according to child welfare reports, subsequently committed more crime than others who had not been maltreated. Analyses of crimes by category—property, person, and society—provided further evidence of a link between child maltreatment and crime at the bivariate level. Tests of gender differences showed that crime generally is more prevalent among males, although females with a history of maltreatment were more likely than those in a no-maltreatment (comparison) group to report having had some prior involvement in crime...

School Factors as Moderators of the Relationship Between Physical Child Abuse and Pathways of Antisocial Behavior | Journal of Interpersonal Violence
Klika, J. Bart, Todd I. Herrenkohl, and Jungeun Olivia Lee
2012 Physical child abuse is a predictor of antisocial behavior in adolescence and adulthood. Few studies have investigated factors that moderate the risk of physical child abuse for later occurring outcomes, including antisocial behavior. This analysis uses data from the Lehigh Longitudinal Study to investigate the prediction of antisocial behavior from physical child abuse and the buffering role of 3 school-related factors (i.e., school commitment, school dropout, and IQ), which are hypothesized to change the course of antisocial behavior from childhood into the adult years...

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