Jeffrey M. Robbins, LICSW

Jeffrey Robbins is a licensed clinical social worker in Neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a Lecturer on Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He is the first social worker to receive this academic appointment. Jeff has spent the last 35 years counseling individuals and families living with Alzheimer’s disease and he has given multiple presentations on issues pertaining to caregivers.

In 1998 he co-founded The Eleanor Robbins Community Program: Caring for Each Other; a Volunteer program for students wanting to learn about Alzheimer’s disease through weekly visits with a nursing home resident on a dementia care unit. This program became the template for the creation of the Harvard College Alzheimer’s Buddies program; a volunteer program for Harvard undergraduates which, in turn, inspired the development of National Alzheimer’s Buddies (NAB), a non-profit initiative involving college students. NAB currently has 20 colleges and universities across the country running an Alzheimer’s Buddies chapter and continues to grow annually. Many long-term care facilities have expressed their sentiment that the Alzheimer’s Buddies program should become the gold standard of care for nursing home residents living with Alzheimer’s disease.

Since coming to the Brigham 24 years ago, Jeff has been involved in a number of community programs, including creating and teaching a course in Family Systems and Community Mental Health at Jimma University in Jimma, Ethiopia. He has also been supervising and mentoring graduate students for 40 years.

In addition to his work at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Jeff has been in private practice since 1980.