ChiaChing Chen, Ed.D, M.A., M.S.
Part-time Lecturer
Armitage Hall, Room 332
311 North Fifth Street
Camden, NJ 08102, USA
Phone: (856) 225-6290
Email: cc1610@rutgers.edu
About Dr. ChiaChing Chen
Dr. Chen received her M.A., M.S., and Ed.D. in Health Behavior Studies from Columbia University, USA. Dr. Chen started her academic career as a health behavioral scientist whose goals were to advocate community-based, cross-cultural research with an eye towards applying it for public health issues for individuals, families, and communities. Gradually, she expanded her focus to encompass developing and implementing participatory evidenced based practice interventions that are founded in theory-based knowledge and skills to address public health issues among needy, underserved, and vulnerable populations.
Most of Dr. Chen’s research was conducted through an interdisciplinary collaboration. As a behavioral scientist who was trained in health promotion and health education, she strives to identify strategies to advocate for a better quality of life through health promotion and disease prevention, improved accessibility to healthcare services, and to eliminate health disparities among different socioeconomics groups. In a world filled with distractions, it is vital and necessary to keep my focus on the continuing advancement and dissemination of new and life changing information and protocols to create a better quality of life.
One example of her recent publication that was published in Frontier in Public Health in 2017 is to empirically identify decision-making preferences of long-term healthcare use among retired populations. Using a rigorous research design, the result of the study shows developing community-based formal/informal home care would lead to economic gains and health outcome disparity. A provision of compensation to family health caregivers for their informal home care for the elderly is a key factor and a viable option. Her interest in this topic was the motivation for another empirical study that was published in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in 2015. This study investigated the delayed and unmet healthcare needs for the elderly by applying a theoretical and experimental approach using a large survey from a community tracking study. The implications of this study confirmed that preventive services are especially important for older adults.
Another focus of her research that she has found intriguing is teen pregnancy prevention. Teen pregnancy continues to affect youth of color disproportionately, especially for those who reside in low income and underserved communities. In order to identify effective ways to educate youth, it is necessary to investigate their knowledge and attitudinal belief toward risky sexual behavior. She was determined to find out the methods to empower youth’s self-efficacy and negotiating skills when encountering risky sexual situations, and the ways to avoid unintended pregnancy and STDs. Thus, several community-based sex education intervention studies were conducted. For example, the study that was published in Journal of Children and Poverty in 2011 was to identify the impact of a school-based sexual health intervention on teen pregnancy prevention, as well as to estimate if the intervention was cost-effective in the short and long-term by controlling for various influential factors. This study led to another publication (Mindshare International Journal of Research and Development, 2012) that utilized a similar analytical approach to examine the effectiveness of a school-based intervention that was conducted at a different geographic area (in the Bronx) with a different population. The results were in favor of her hypothesis that abstinence education for youth could delay early onset of sexual behavior, which alternatively avoided unintended pregnancy. Following this study, she continued to engage in a community-based intervention, in which she adopted a train-the-trainer approach to replicate an evidenced-based sex education intervention in Yonkers, NY. This led to two other publications (Journal of Adolescent Health, 2014; Health Promotion Practice, 2016), which involved process evaluations that discussed the methods in improving the replication success of evidence-based interventions during a pre-implementation phase and practical best practice strategies used in implementing a sexual health education program among sociocultural diverse youth in a northeastern city in the United States.
Dr. Chen’s another broader research has focused on accessibility, disparities, and psychosocial determinants associated with individual level outcomes. The publications include an empirical study that assesses children’s needs for healthcare services among the variations of State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in the USA (Health Policy, 2010); a community-based study that investigated the psychosocial determinants of participating in colonoscopy testing and their implication for health education among the elderly (Journal of Cancer Education, 2010); a study that employs GIS spatial analysis to identify area where to establish new grocery stores in counties within New Jersey, USA as a solution to address the structural inequalities that disproportionately promote obesity among the underserved and disadvantaged populations (International Journal of Health and Nutrition, 2010); a community-based study that survey on 15,302 elderly people 65 years and older in seven municipalities in 2006 in Japan that reveals clear-cut evidence of barriers to necessary care (International Journal of Environmental Research in Public Health, 2010); an empirical study that examined the waste tire resources recovery program and environmental health policy in Taiwan (International Journal of Environmental Research in Public Health, 2009); an empirical study that examined how the decision to purchase private health insurance and hospitalization is made based on household income and socio-demographic factors under Japan’s national health insurance (Open Economics Journal, 2009); an empirical study that systematically examined the actual use of outpatient services by children as the theoretical-base of realized access (i.e. use of health services) by controlling for influential factors (Applied Economics, 2008); a study that examined children with special healthcare needs and unmet healthcare needs under the State Children Health Insurance Program (The Journal of Insurance and Risk Management, 2007); a community-based study that examined behavioral choices among elderly formal and informal home and nursing home care (Geneva Papers on Risk & Insurance – Issues & Practice, 2006); and an article documenting the importance of education, counseling services from health care providers, mental health agency services, and detoxification treatments on preventing relapse behaviors for substance users (Advances in Health Economics and Health Services Research, 2005).
Course Information
50:220:317:90: Social Marketing: A Systematic Approach for Health Promotion (Online)