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Biography
Dr. Mei Chung has more than a decade of experience conducting complex systematic reviews to support policy and guideline developments. Before her transition to Tufts University, Dr. Chung was Assistant Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality designated Evidence-based Practice Center at Tufts Medical Center. She is lead author or co-author of more than 40 evidence reports (i.e., large, complex systematic reviews). Throughout her work, her analyses have informed U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’s clinical guidelines; coverage decisions for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act; and nutrition recommendations, such as the Dietary Reference Intake values and Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
More recently, Dr. Chung received funding from the World Health Organization (WHO) to conduct scoping reviews and subsequent systematic reviews to support the work of updating the Food and Agriculture Organization/WHO nutrient requirements for children aged 0 – 36 months. Dr. Chung also has expertise in developing new methods and adapting existing methods of evidence synthesis and stakeholder engagement in research to facilitate the translation of evidence to policy.
In the past 3 years, Dr. Chung have expanded her research to include microbiome and DNA methylation data in collaboration with colleagues at the School of Medicine. Both DNA methylation and microbiome data are high-dimensional data that need to be processed using special computation methods to reduce the dimension before statistical analyses. Her long-term research goal in this area is to develop new analytic methods and approach to integrating microbiome and DNA methylation data in nutrition epidemiological research.