Miki Hong Biography

About

Miki Hong received her BA from Columbia University, an MPH and an executive MHSA, both from the University of Michigan. Miki is a health services researcher with formal training in epidemiology and health management and policy. She is a tobacco control scholar and has published journal articles that relay the conflicts of interest between academic scientists and the tobacco industry. Miki is interested in medical effectiveness research as it relates to policy and lawmaking. She has served as a task force member with the California Health Benefits Review Program (CHBRP). CHBRP responds to requests from the California State legislature to provide independent analysis of the medical, financial and public health impacts of proposed health insurance benefit mandates and repeals in California state.

As faculty of health and medicine at the University of Newcastle (Australia), she conducted research related to ascertainment of health-related grounds for inadmissibility of persons applying for admission into the United States. She studies the effect of current trends in US policymaking on disease and inadmissibility as they relate to regional endemic diseases of refugees and asylees.

Miki is currently an assistant adjunct professor at Mills College at Northeastern University and teaches a course titled “Principles of Epidemiology in Medicine and Public Health”.

Project Description

Public health and urban planning share social justice concerns related to equity and access to essential services. Miki studies urban planning strategies to aid tobacco control and demonstrate that there is a direct relationship between design and livability. Public health advocates, through their involvement in the creation of nonbinding “comprehensive” plans, affect land use agendas. Clean air with smoke-free spaces and tobacco-free green spaces is a determinant of health that has generated community activity to pursue changes in tobacco-use policies. Her research aims to understand how communities can ensure that their health goals are not outclassed by competing interests when legislation is drafted to implement goals in the “comprehensive” plan. Understanding the role of tobacco control in a community’s health profile is a step in creating policy changes that creates equity for those underrepresented in local decision-making. Her research is funded by City to City: Policy Equity for All (C2C), a Northeastern University Impact Accelerator.