Sukyung Chung, Ph.D.

Assistant Investigator, Health Policy Research

Sukyung Chung, Ph.D., is an assistant investigator at Palo Alto Medical Foundation's Research Institute. Before joining PAMF, Dr. Chung completed a two-year fellowship in the University of California, San Francisco's Clinical Services Research Training Program in the Psychiatry Department. This program is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Chung has a bachelor's degree in pharmacy from the Ewha Women's University and a master's in public health from Seoul National University, both in Seoul, Korea.

In 2001, Dr. Chung moved from Korea to the United States to join the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's doctoral program in the Health Policy and Administration Department. Dr. Chung was awarded a doctorate in health economics in 2005. The title of her dissertation was "Retirement and Obesity among the Near Elderly."

Dr. Chung's research at PAMF includes developing methods to measure and compensate primary care physician performance. She will also be assessing value enhancement of QI activities at PAMF and developing practical approaches to evaluate QI activities. Additionally, Dr. Chung will be researching patient and physician race/ethnicity/language concordance and quality of care, and assessing comparative effectiveness of oral medications for type 2 diabetes in Asian Americans.