Jeannette Ickovics

Jeannette R. Ickovics is the Samuel and Liselotte Herman Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School of Public Health and professor of psychology. She served as dean of faculty at Yale-NUS College in Singapore from 2018 until 2021. At the Yale School of Public Health, Ickovics was founding director of the department of social and behavioral sciences (2002–2012) and founding director of: Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CASE) as part of Yale’s inaugural Clinical and Translational Science Award (2007–2017). She was also deputy director for the Yale Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, where she was director of an NIH training program for pre- and post- doctoral fellows.

Ickovics is author of more than 225 peer-reviewed publications. Her research investigates the interplay of complex biomedical, behavioral, social, and psychological factors that influence individual and community health. Her community-based research—funded with more than $40 million in grants from the NIH, CDC, and private foundations—is characterized by methodological rigor and cultural sensitivity. In addition to other grants, she has been principal investigator on two NIH-funded multi-site randomized controlled trials on an innovative model of group prenatal care, demonstrating a greater than 33 percent reduction in preterm birth. Based on these results, the United Health Foundation funded a dissemination study of group prenatal care, with an eye toward national scale-up.

Her newest work, funded by NASA, the Rockefeller Foundation, Yale Planetary Solutions, and the Hecht Faculty Network Award at the Yale Institute for Global Health, focuses on climate resilience, health, and equity.

Ickovics has been recognized with numerous honors, including most recently the Martha May Elliot Award honoring extraordinary health services to mothers and children from the American Public Health Association (2023), the Strickland-Daniel Mentoring Award from the American Psychological Association (2018), and elected a fellow of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research.

She is a member of the advisory board of the Eden Project (United Kingdom, educational charity and social enterprise, nature-based solutions), and she is chair of the board of scientific affairs of the American Psychological Association and an inaugural member of their Climate Change Advisory Group.