Position and Affiliations:
I am currently a clinical instructor at University of British Columbia's (UBC's) Department of Family Practice, and I practice outpatient family medicine in Vancouver and Yellowknife. I am also currently a visitor at UBC's Centre for Health Services and Policy Research. I am affiliated with the Harvard China Health Partnership, Harvard Kennedy School's Evidence for Policy Design, and University of British Columbia's Centre for Health Education Scholarship. I continue to be involved in guiding medical trainees in the Peer Mentorship in Medical Education--a longituindal mentoring program.
Paths to current research
I began my studies at University of Waterloo's Biotechnology / Economics program, hoping to pursue business. However, I quickly developed deep interest in research work and started exploring molecular biology research. Simultaneously, my curiosity of the clinical applications of the research motivated me to volunteer in the clinical world, ultimately moving me to complete medical school and family medicine residency. During the medical training, I realized that effective improvement of patient's health required integration of my bedside knowledge with a broader understanding of the health system. I am therefore pursuing the Health Systems Concentration. My PhD degree is from the Global Health and Populations Department at Harvard T H Chan School’s Population Health Sciences PhD.
Current research interests
As health system reacts to various changes, ranging from payment reforms, COVID pandemic, and technological shocks, it becomes imperative to understand the process of the health system evolution and such changes’ attendant impact. My research focuses on understanding health system response to these three changes by applying an organizational behaviour perspective across countries, health care organizations, and individual health care service providers. My research ensures that policies can generate the intended benefit for health systems and health system stakeholders can remain resilient. Specifically, I focus on how characteristics of health care organizations such as hospitals or primary care organizations affect reform efforts’ effectiveness. I also examine how countries responded to COVID in instituting attendant non-pharmaceutical intervention and vaccine donation policies. Lastly, I investigate how health systems evolve relative to technological innovations, such as telemedicine or artificial intelligence (AI). The research thus draws on sociology, economics, and psychology literature to conceptualize how individuals, groups of individuals, or networks of groups behave. I conceptualize health system changes as a product of the interaction between the structural factors and the relevant stakeholders’ response. Methodologically, I use econometrics methods for secondary analysis on survey or administrative data to generate causally robust inferences. Geographically, I have ongoing collaborations with East Asian and North American countries.