Jingjing Gao

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About

I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston) School of Public Health, whose research integrates public health policy, digital health, Geographic Information Science (GIS), and population health analytics to examine how technologies, policies, and social determinants shape health outcomes and disparities. My work focuses on cancer prevention and survivorship, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease caregiving, mental health, food and nutrition policy, and health technology adoption, using large-scale national surveys, geospatial data, social media sentiment, mobility data, and spatial-temporal methods to generate policy-relevant evidence. I have published 19 peer-reviewed journal articles and a scholarly book, with additional manuscripts under review in areas including AI and cancer care, digital health inequities, cancer information burden, HPV vaccine awareness, and pandemic resilience. My current research program is supported by a growing federal grant pipeline as PI and Co-I, including projects from NIH, CPRIT, USDA, and the Gulf Research Program, and is centered on advancing health equity through data-driven, technology-enabled public health research. Through interdisciplinary collaborations across public health, medicine, public policy, data science, geography, and political science, I aim to produce actionable evidence to inform policy, improve healthcare access, and support underserved communities.

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Research Interests

• Adolescent Health
• Aging / Gerontology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Biostatistics and Data Science
• Border Health
• Cancer
• Community Health
• Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease
• Epidemiology
• Geospatial Analyses
• Mental Health
• Nutrition
• Social Determinants of Health
• Women’s Health

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Personal Links

• https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lfGxyQQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao