Lei Jin

As of 2024, Lei Jin is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and School of Public Health and Primary Care at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests mainly lie in the area of social determinants of health. I am interested in studying the relationship between social networks and health. She has just finished a study looking at social networks and mental health among rural-to-urban migrant in China and found that migrants’ ties to their sending communities foster mental health by generating favorable social comparison and greater self-esteem.

In the past, Lei Jin has also examined how the marital relationship influences health and healthcare use. She is also interested in studying social inequality and health. She has collected data in large nationally representative surveys in China to examine how the perception of social status and social mobility can influence individuals’ mental and physical health. Other areas of research interests include the patient-doctor relationship and changing positions of healthcare professionals in the healthcare reforms in China.

She received her undergraduate degree at Nanjing University, and obtained an MS in statistics and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. From 2005 to 2007, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Robert Wood Johnson Scholars in Health Policy Research Program at Harvard University, during which time she worked with Dr. Nicholas Christakis and the Human Nature Lab.