Kao-Ping Chua, MD, PhD

Dr. Kao-Ping Chua is a primary care pediatrician and health services researcher at the University of Michigan Medical School. He is the Marilyn Fisher Blanch Research Professor of Child Health Policy and the Director of the Susan B. Meister Child Health Evaluation and Research Center. He completed the Boston Combined Residency in Pediatrics in 2020. Subsequently, he obtained a Ph.D. in health policy from Harvard University, with a focus on the empirical methods used in policy evaluation.

Dr. Chua’s research focuses on slowing the U.S. opioid epidemic, improving the affordability of health care, reducing the use of low-value care, and identifying emerging trends in health care utilization among children and young adults. He has conducted seminal studies on the prevalence and safety of opioid prescribing to children and young adults, as well as some of the first national studies on the epidemiology and harms of opioid prescribing by U.S. dentists. Additionally, he has made key contributions to the measurement of low-value care in administrative databases, including the development of claims-based measures of low-value pediatric care and antibiotic overuse.

Dr. Chua has published over 100 manuscripts to date, including over 80 as first or senior author. His studies have been published in high-impact journals such as NEJM, JAMA, BMJ, JAMA Internal Medicine, JAMA Pediatrics, and Pediatrics, and regularly receive coverage from national media outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, and NPR. He is the recipient of the Academic Pediatric Association Young Investigator Award and the AcademyHealth Nemours Child Health Services Research Award.

1. Evaluating the appropriateness of opioid prescribing and effects of policies on this prescribing, particularly among pediatric patients and those with acute pain
2. Assessing the magnitude and implications of cost-sharing for health care services
3. Measuring the prevalence and correlates of low-value health care
4. Identifying emerging trends in health care utilization among children and young adults, especially prescription drug utilization