Dr. Jun Ma is a professor of public health and medicine and co-director of the Center for Research on Health and Aging in the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a dually trained MD and PhD scientist with expertise in preventive medicine, nutrition science, and biometry. Dr. Ma has devoted her career to developing new knowledge in precision lifestyle medicine science and translating it into clinical and public health practice to promote patient-centered population health management and health equality.

Prior to joining the UIC in August 2015, Dr. Ma was a senior scientist at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute and a consulting professor at Stanford University School of Medicine. Over the past 15 years, Dr. Ma have established a solid and progressive portfolio that embodies an integrative and transformative approach to actionable research, education, and outreach. Her Precision Lifestyle Medicine research portfolio is designed to: (1) Accelerate the process of translating medical research discoveries into treatments for diverse patient populations; (2) Train a new generation of clinical and translational researchers; and (3) Engage stakeholders and communities in clinical studies and dissemination and implementation efforts.

Dr. Ma’s research seeks to advance scientific understanding of the sociocontextual forces that influence healthcare provider and consumer behavior as well as the neurobiological mechanisms of behavior change, and to improve people’s health and quality of life through prevention and high-value patient care in primary care settings and communities. She has led numerous federally funded randomized controlled clinical trials in different disease areas, including, but not limited to, obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and depression. She has successfully integrated Internet and mobile technologies into the lifestyle interventions evaluated in those trials to promote healthy eating, physical activity, and behavioral self-management. Dr. Ma believes that the pivotal role of high-quality, efficient primary care in the prevention and control of lifestyle-related major public health problems and in the eventual elimination of health inequalities further escalates in the new paradigm of accountable health care and patient-centered population health management. In addition, her research has recently forayed into mechanistic explorations, including a new major award through the NIH Office of the Director for a Science of Behavior Change Initiative project that will uncover the neurophysiological self-regulation mechanisms in behavior therapy for adults with comorbid obesity and depression.

My research focuses primarily on the quality and delivery of care for patients with chronic lung diseases, in particular, for patients with COPD and lung cancer. Our research program encompasses a number of research areas that utilize state of the art clinical research methodology, including clinical trials design, comparative effectiveness research, implementation sciences, health services research and clinical epidemiology. Our research group is interested in the effects of multimorbidity using pharmacoepidemiology of COPD and non-COPD treatments on patient centered outcomes. We are also interested in patient health behaviors and the effects of health behaviors on outcomes. One of our primary research focuses is on identifying and intervening upon potential gaps in the quality of care for patients with lung cancer and COPD. These gaps include a focus on the quality of end-of-life communication and care, delivery of high quality palliative care, heterogeneity in care, and whether health care delivery is concordant with best available evidence.