Jane Leer

Jane Leer (she/her) is a doctoral student in Duke University’s Joint Program in Public Policy and Psychology, where her work focuses on social inequality, policy, and human development with the goal of informing the design and delivery of culturally responsive social and education policies. Her dissertation is examining (1) how the types of diversity-related values that schools communicate relate to racial and socioeconomic disparities in adolescent social belonging, mental health, and academic engagement, and (2) how growing up in a gentrifying neighborhood relates to academic engagement among adolescents experiencing poverty. In a second line of work, she examines the causal effect of policies and interventions designed to strengthen family, school, and community learning environments. This includes projects evaluating the impact of home visit parenting programs on early childhood development in Latin America and social norms interventions on adolescent gender attitudes in West Africa, as well as current work exploring how structural racism may impact Black families’ engagement in nurse home visit services in North Carolina.