Tammy Chang, Assistant Professor in the Department Family Medicine, talks about her team’s journey to tap into adolescents’ everyday lives while minimizing the research burden among their participants.

Programs designed to address the high prevalence of risky health behaviors among adolescents often miss the mark. Understanding adolescents’ thoughts and opinions is challenging, yet vital if we hope to create programs and policies that promote their health and wellbeing.

Dr. Chang is a health services researcher and practicing family physician with a passion for adolescent health, specifically, breaking the cycle of poverty and poor health among adolescent mothers and their children. Her research is focused on improving access to reproductive health care and promoting healthy pregnancy weight gain among at-risk adolescents using text messaging, social media, and other emerging technology.

Emergent Research events are aimed at better understanding the various types of research undertaken across campus, particularly as they relate to library services and support, opportunities for collaboration, data management and preservation, and beyond.