I was born in Russia, but moved to the U.S. in 1977. I received my B.A. in psychology
from UC Berkeley in 1993, and my Ph.D. in social psychology (with minors in health
psychology and psychometrics) from UCLA in 2000. I completed a post-doctoral fellowship
in an interdisciplinary research training program on psychosocial and mental health
services for people living with HIV. I was awarded a UCLA AIDS Institute Seed Grant
for a project examining the effects of an expressive writing intervention on immune
function and psychological adjustment for people living with HIV (Rivkin, Gustafson,
Weingarten and Chin, 2006). I worked at UCLA as project director for the Eban program,
a multi-site NIMH funded trial testing a culturally congruent HIV/STD risk reduction
intervention for HIV-discordant African-American couples. I moved to Alaska in 2006
and worked as a visiting faculty member in the Psychology Department at UAA, before
joining the faculty here at UAF in 2007.
The central theme of my research is adaptation in a social and cultural context, involving
examination of the factors that promote physical and psychological health for people
coping with stressful events. My work explores the effects of health interventions
that incorporate cultural and community strengths, such as culturally congruent HIV
risk reduction, health promotion, and coping interventions. I am also interested in
how actively confronting a stressful event and expressing the accompanying emotions
affect health and well-being, and in the role that the social and cultural context
play in this process.
I am a researcher at the Center for Alaska Native Health Research (CANHR), and investigator
on the "Yup'ik Experiences of Stress and Coping" project. The goal of this project
is to understand stress and coping in Yu'pik communities in order to develop a community-informed
and culturally-grounded stress-reduction intervention.
In addition to being an active researcher, I enjoy teaching. I have taught undergraduate
courses in Social Psychology, Health Psychology, Research Methods, General Psychology,
and Personality, and Ph.D. courses in Community Psychology, Program Evaluation, and
Community Practicum. Music and nature are also important in my life. In my spare time,
I enjoy singing, songwriting, canoeing, hiking, skiing, and paragliding with my husband,
Adam.
Inna and husband Adam riding the Gulkana river current.
Collaborating with Yup’ik communities.
Dr. Rivkin & her research team waiting to board their bush plane after disseminating
project findings in one of her partnering Yup’ik communities.
Dr. Rivkin enjoying a spring bike ride in the woods!
Publications:
- Rivkin, I.D., Johnson, S.*, Lopez, E., Trimble, J., Quaintance, T.*, & Orr, E. (2017). Yup’ik
understanding of stress within the context of rapid cultural change. Journal of Community Psychology, 45(1), 33-52
- Hewell, V.M.*, Vasquez, A.R.*, & Rivkin, I.D. (2017). Systemic and individual factors in the buprenorphine treatment-seeking process:
A qualitative study. Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy, 12(1):3. doi: 10.1186/s13011-016-0085-y
- Allen, J., Rivkin, I.D., & Lopez, E.D.S. (2014). Health and well-being. In F. Leong, L. Comas-Diaz, G. Nagayama
Hall, V. McLloyd, & J. Trimble (Eds.) APA Handbook of Multicultural Psychology: Vol. 1. Theory and Research (pp. 299-311). Washington, DC: APA Press.
- Rivkin, I.D., Trimble, J., Lopez, E., Johnson, S.*, Orr, E., & Allen, J. (2013). Disseminating
research in rural Yup’ik communities: Challenges and ethical considerations in moving
from discovery to intervention development. International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 72 (suppl. 1), 409-416. doi: 10.3402/ijch.v72i0.20958
