The National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) is proud to recognize August Jenkins, Ph.D., as the 2022 recipient of the John L. and Harriette P. McAdoo Dissertation Award, which provides support for the recipient to complete an approved doctoral dissertation with a focus on issues impacting ethnic minority families. Her paper is titled “Black Americans’ Relationship Quality and Emotional Health Over Time: The Role of Socio-Ecological Context and Gender.” 

Dr. Jenkins is a 2022-2023 Illinois DRIVE (Diversity Realized at Illinois by Visioning Excellence) distinguished postdoctoral and visiting scholar in Family Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she conducts research in the BRACE (Black Relationships and socio-Community Environments) lab. Dr. Jenkins examines socioecological determinants of couple/family functioning and mental health across spans of time for Black Americans from an intersectional perspective. She earned her doctorate in human development and Family Science from the Pennsylvania State University, and the same for her Master of Science.

Dr. Jenkins draws upon diverse theoretical and quantitative methodological approaches in her research to better understand Black Americans’ health outcomes and contextualize them within the broader racial environment. Her research interests focus on the socioecological and gendered connections that affect Black Americans’ intimate relationships and mental-emotional health across time.

John L. and Harriette P. McAdoo, the namesakes of this award, made significant contributions to the scholarship on ethnic minority families, especially our understanding of African Americans' familial experiences.

Dr. Jenkins will give an address as part of this award at the 2023 NCFR Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida.

The National Council on Family Relations is the premier professional association for the multidisciplinary understanding of families. NCFR has a membership of nearly 3,000 family researchers, practitioners and educators. For more information on the National Council on Family Relations or its scholarly publications, visit the NCFR website at ncfr.org.