Hai-Yen Sung, PhD
Adjunct Professor, Institute for Health and Aging, University of California at San Francisco
Adjunct Professor, Institute for Health and Aging, University of California at San Francisco
I am Professor of Health Economics at the Institute for Health & Aging and the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at UCSF. My research areas include: (1) economic cost of smoking, other tobacco use, and secondhand smoke exposure; (2) economic evaluation of cigarette taxes and other tobacco control policies; and (3) cost of cancer and other illnesses. I have substantial experience in developing econometric models and analytical methodologies on the evaluation of tobacco control policy and the estimation of economic cost of smoking. I have expanded my cost-of-smoking research to low- or middle-income countries including China, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Tanzania, as well as vulnerable sub-population such as African Americans, Hispanics, and persons with mental illness. I am a co-investigator of a recently completed study that estimated the costs of smoking and secondhand smoke exposure in 2009 for each of 58 counties in California. This is the third in a series of studies on the cost of smoking in California that my research team has conducted every 10 years since 1989. Our county-level cost of smoking estimates have been widely used by policymakers, legislators, and tobacco control advocates in California, where many policies are made at the local level. I have recently completed a study that estimated the mortality and healthcare costs of lung cancer attributable to smoking among African Americans in the US. Currently, I am a PI of an ongoing three-year project that evaluates the impact of tobacco tax policy on cigarette smoking behaviors and quitting behaviors among African Americans, and assesses whether tobacco tax increases are regressive to the African American community in California. I am also a co-investigator of five ongoing research projects, one of which is a large five-year UCSF Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science Center (TCORS) Grant funded by NIH/FDA to estimate the healthcare costs attributable to different tobacco product uses such as menthol cigarettes, cigars, snuff, and chewing tobacco. My research work in the economic cost of smoking and secondhand smoke exposure and the economic impact of tobacco control policies is highly relevant to the development of tailored tobacco prevention and intervention policies to further reduce the burden of tobacco use and, consequently, the burden of cancer, because tobacco use is the most important risk factor for cancer.
National Taiwan University, Taiwan, BA, 1977, Economics
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, MA, 1980, Economics
University of California, Berkeley, CA, Ph.D., 1992, Agriculture & Resource Economics
University of California, Berkeley, CA, Postdoc, 1994, Health Economics