Young-Rock Hong, PhD, MPH

Dr. Young-Rock Hong, PhD, MPH, is a Courtesy Assistant Professor in the Health Services Research, Management, and Policy program at the University of Florida. He is a health services researcher and medical sociologist who studies the social contexts of medical practice and the interactions between care providers and patients throughout the continuum of collaborative care. Dr. Hong joined the department as a faculty member in 2020 and is an alumnus of the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions, where he earned his PhD in Health Services Research in 2019. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Family and Preventive Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine.

Dr. Hong’s professional goal is to help reduce healthcare disparities and inequalities while maintaining a standardized quality of care. To achieve this goal, he aims to understand the social and cultural factors in an effective patient-provider relationship and their trust-building; to examine health consequences of interactions in care delivery, and to develop and evaluate patient-centered care interventions.

Dr. Young-Rock Hong has a solid background in health services research, having taken part in evaluations of evidence-based preventive care services utilization, access to primary care under the current health reform, community population health assessments, patient satisfaction improvement initiatives, and industrial hygiene, health, and safety projects. His primary research interests focus on designing and analysis of service quality measures in health services organizations using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), integrating evaluated patient-centered outcomes into Value-Based Payment (VBP) models, and improvements in patient-provider interaction quality in clinical encounters.