Justin Heinze, PhD

Dr. Heinze is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. He also serves as the Evaluation Lead of the U-M Injury Prevention Center’s Outreach and Translation Core. Dr. Heinze is an educational psychologist with a concentration in measurement, evaluation, and statistics. He has evaluated the effectiveness of many core projects, including SAMHSA’s Drug-free Communities program, Michigan’s Core State Violence and Injury Prevention Program (CDC) and has taught graduate-level courses on health program evaluation. Dr. Heinze is currently the lead evaluator for two National Institute of Justice-funded interventions focused on school safety and violence prevention, the lead investigator of an NIJ-funded study of an anonymous reporting system designed for the early identification of threats in a school community and leads the Center in supporting program evaluation of our partners.

Dr. Heinze’s research interests include developmental transitions, social exclusion/ostracism, school safety and longitudinal data methodology. Current projects examine the social determinants of health and risk behavior in adolescence and emerging adulthood, including substance use, anxiety, and youth violence. His research expertise is in the area of how youth exposure to violence and victimization delay successful adoption and persistence in adult role attainment, and whether positive interpersonal resources available to adolescents and young adults can mitigate the effect of violence exposure and in turn facilitate adjustment to adulthood.