Esther O. Chung

Dr. Esther Chung is a social epidemiologist in the Center for Behavioral Health and Wellbeing at RTI International. Dr. Chung has more than 10 years of experience conducting interdisciplinary applied public health research to understand how social environments and behaviors shape health and well-being among populations with limited resources, including people who use drugs, people experiencing homelessness, and low-income, rural families. Dr. Chung has extensive experience using epidemiologic, causal inference, and mixed methods approaches to identify key determinants of health, understand mechanisms, and inform evidence-based policies.

Currently, Dr. Chung is the Principal Investigator of a statewide evaluation examining a California initiative to support community-based organizations in delivering overdose prevention strategies and substance use disorder treatment services. She also contributes to multiple National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded community-based studies of people who use drugs to understand the relationships between substance use, homelessness, criminal legal involvement, harm reduction interventions and implementation, overdose, and other health and social outcomes.

Before joining RTI in 2023, Dr. Chung worked extensively on maternal and child health and development studies in low- and middle-income countries in East Africa and South Asia. Her research experience includes early child development, maternal and child health, mental health, and intervention evaluations.