• PhD, Economics, Iowa State University, 2004
• MS, Statistics, Iowa State University, 2002
• MMgt, Management Science, University of Science and Technology of China, 1999
• BS, Management Science, University of Science and Technology of China, 1996

Dr. Chen’s areas of expertise focus on obesity, health disparities, economics of genomics, health economics, and applied econometrics.

2016: Excellence in Diversity Civilian Award: Federal Asian Pacific American Council

2013: Winner, CDC Behavioral and Social Science Award for paper “Chen Z, Crawford Gotway CA. The Role of Geographic Scale in Testing the Income Inequality Hypothesis as an Explanation of Health Disparities. Social Science & Medicine 2012;75:1022-1031”

2013: Nominated for CDC Shepard Award: for paper “Chen Z, Roy K., Gotway Crawford CA. Obesity Prevention: The Impact of Local Health Departments. Health Services Research. 2013, 48(2):603-627.”

2010/2011: Finalist, CDC Kaafee Billah Memorial Award for Health Economics

2010/2011: Recognized as “Exceptional Reviewer” by Medical Care

2006: Nominated for the ACCI Applied Consumer Economics Award. [Cho S., Chen Z, Yen ST, Eastwood DB. “The effects of urban sprawl on body mass index: where people live does matter?” presented at the 52nd Annual Conference of the American Council on Consumer Interests. March 15-18, 2006, Baltimore, MD]

• American Economic Association
• American Society of Health Economists
• Chinese Economists Society (U.S. based)
• China Health Policy and Management Society (U.S. based)
• International Health Economics Association

Dr. Chen teaches courses on health policy, health management, research methods, and claims data analysis.

Dr. Chen has published more than 40 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals on topics including behavioral and social science research, economic of obesity, health economics, health disparity, social epidemiology, and small area analysis, in leading field journals including Social Science & Medicine, American Journal of Public Health, Health Services Research, and many others. Dr. Chen received the 2013 CDC Excellence in Behavioral and Social Science Research Award.

His research areas include economics of obesity, health disparities, economics of genomics, social determinants of health, evaluation of food and nutrition programs, health econometrics, and economic evaluation.

Athar, H., Chen, Z. A. A., Contreary, K., Xu, X., Dube, S. R., and Chang, M.-H. H.Impact of increasing coverage for select smoking cessation therapies with no Out-of-Pocket cost among the Medicaid population in Alabama, Georgia, and Maine Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. 2016, Jan-Feb;22(1):40-7.

Contreary K, Chen Z, Chattopadhyay SK, Chang M-H. A Review of Tools to Calculate the Cost of Health Conditions and Common Health Risk Factors. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. 2015, Nov-Dec;21(6):E1-E10

Chen Z, Roy K., Gotway Crawford CA. Obesity Prevention: The Impact of Local Health Departments. Health Services Research. 2013, 48(2):603-627.

Chen Z, Crawford Gotway CA. The Role of Geographic Scale in Testing the Income Inequality Hypothesis as an Explanation of Health Disparities. Social Science & Medicine 2012;75:1022-1031

Chen Z, Roy K., Gotway Crawford CA. Statistical inference of the concentration and the health achievement indices, Health Economics, 2012, 21(11):1375-1381.

Chen Z, Huffman WE, Rozelle S. Inverse relationship between productivity and farm size: The case of China. Contemporary Economic Policy. 2011, 29(4):580-592.

Chen Z, Zhang Q. Nutrigenomics Hypothesis: Examining the Association between Food Stamp Program Participation and Bodyweight among Low-income Women. Journal of Family and Economic Issues 2011, 32:508-520.

Meltzer DO, Chen Z. The impact of minimum wage rates on body weight in the United States, in Economic Aspects of Obesity. Grossman M, Mocan N. eds, pp 17-34. The University Of Chicago Press, May 1, 2011. (National Bureau of Economic Research book series) [Book chapter]

Chen Z, Roy K., Gotway Crawford CA. Examining the Role of Gender in Career Advancement at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. American Journal of Public Health 2010, 100:426-434.

Chen Z, Roy K., Haddix AC., Thacker SB. Factors associated with differences in mortality and self-reported health across states in the United State. Health Policy 2010, 94: 203-210.

Chen Z, Roy K, Calculating the Concentration Index with Repetitive Values of Indicators of Economic Welfare. Journal of Health Economics 2009;28:169-175. Chen Z, Cho S-H, Poudyal N, Roberts R. Forecasting House Prices under Different Market Segmentation Assumptions. Urban Studies 2009; 46:167‰ÛÒ187.

Yen ST, Chen Z, Eastwood DB. Lifestyle and obesity: a multi-regime switching regression analysis with an endogenous regressor. Health Services Research 2009;44:1345-1369.

Chen Z, Meltzer DO. Beefing up with the Chans: Evidence for the effects of relative income and income inequality on health from the China Health and Nutrition Survey. Social Science & Medicine 2008; 66:2206-2217.

Yen ST, Andrews M, Chen Z, Eastwood DB. Food Stamp Program Participation and Food Insecurity: An instrumental variables approach. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 2008; 90(1):117-132.

Chen Z, Yang Y. Time Series Models for Forecasting: Testing or Combining? Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econom, 2007;11(1), Article 3. https://www.bepress.com/snde/vol11/iss1/art3

Chen Z, Development and inequality: an endogenous switching regression approach. Economics Letters 2007;96:269-274. Chen Z, Eastwood DB, Yen ST. A decade’s story of childhood malnutrition inequality in China: Where do you live does matter. China Economic Review 2007;18:139-154

Chen Z, Yen ST, Eastwood DB. Effects of food stamp participation on body weight and obesity. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 2005,87:1167-73.

Chen Z, Yen ST. On bias correction in the multivariate sample-selection model. Applied Economics, 2005;37:2459-2468.

Chen Z, CONCINDC: Stata module to calculate concentration index with both individual and grouped data, Statistical Software Components, Boston College, Department of Economics. 2007-01-11. https://econpapers.repec.org/software/bocbocode/S456802.htm

Chen Z*, Kolor K*, Grosse SD, Rodriguez JL, Lynch JA, Green RF, Dotson WD, Bowen MS, Khoury MJ. Trends in Utilization and Costs of BRCA Testing among Women Ages 18-64 Years in the United States, 2003-2014. (*: co-first author). Resubmitted, Genetics in Medicine.

Chen Z, Janet E. Fulton, Kathleen B. Watson, Kakoli Roy, Guijing Wang, Cathleen M. Walsh, Anne C. Haddix, William H. Dietz. Medical Expenditures for Cardiovascular Diseases Associated with Physical Inactivity among U.S. Adults. In Progress.