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NORC at the University Chicago

Yoonsang Kim

Pronouns: She/Her

Principal Data Scientist
Public Health
Social Data Collaboratory
As a lead biostatistician and methodologist, Yoonsang uses data science to study the intersection of digital communications and human opinions and behavior.

Yoonsang oversees study design, statistical analysis, machine learning modeling, data harmonization, and other data science practices for NORC’s Social Data Collaboratory (SDC). Yoonsang has over 15 years of experience in media and public health research and served as co-investigator on several NIH and FDA-funded studies focusing on tobacco control science. She provides methodological and statistical support for studies that aim to examine the media effects on intention and use of tobacco and marijuana. She also specializes in social media methodology for public health research, including developing standardized procedures to collect, clean, and analyze social media data, data quality assessment, and exposure measurement. 

Through the tobacco control research studies funded by NIH and FDA, Yoonsang and her SDC colleagues developed disclosure guidelines for social media analytics to facilitate transparency and replicability. She also published studies that developed the measures of tobacco-related communication environment using social media data and examined the properties and impact of those measures. 

For CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, she led a team of data analysts to collect, harmonize, and analyze quitline data submitted by 50 states, District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico for the National Quitline Data Warehouse.  Kim is also a member of the Data Science Strategy Workgroup that provides an overall vision of data science practices at NORC.

Before joining NORC, Yoonsang worked as a biostatistician at the Institute for Health Research and Policy and as an instructor at the School of Public Health, University of Illinois Chicago. She collaborated with many researchers in Public Health, Pharmacy, and Medicine on NIH-funded studies and numerous publications, providing statistical consulting in randomized controlled trials, longitudinal data analysis, and complex survey data analysis. Prior to UIC, Yoonsang was a Research Professor in the Biostatistics department at the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center, taught Biostatistics in its MPH program, and provided biostatistical consulting to the Ophthalmology department.

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Expertise

Education

PhD

University of Illinois Chicago

MS

University of Iowa

MPH

Seoul National University

BA

Chung-Ang University

Appointments & Affiliations

Member

American Statistical Association

Project Contributions

Using Innovative Machine Learning to Detect Support and Opposition to E-Cigarette Use Prevention Messaging on Twitter and TikTok

First study to examine the content, sources, and patterns of diffusion of E-cigarette prevention campaigns

Client:

National Cancer Institute

Assessing the Effects of Cigar Promotion on Social Media

The first comprehensive study to examine the effects of social media promotion of cigars on tobacco and marijuana use

Funder:

National Cancer Institute

Social Media’s Influence on Flavored Tobacco Use

Investigation of youth-targeted flavored tobacco promotion on social media to inform regulatory decisions

Client:

National Institute on Drug Abuse; Food & Drug Administration

Assessing the Effects of Smokeless Tobacco Influencer Marketing in the Rapidly Changing Media Environment

The first comprehensive study to examine the effects of social media promotion of smokeless tobacco use among rural and urban populations

Funder:

National Cancer Institute and the Food and Drug Administration

Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP)

The nation’s most comprehensive source of hospital care data

Client:

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Menthol Cigarettes & Social Justice Views

Understanding the perceptions of those targeted by marketing of flavored tobacco

Client:

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Support for the Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network

Building the evidence base for addressing opioid use disorder (OUD) stigma and access to OUD treatment

Client:

National Institute of Drug Abuse

Publications

Research Library & Findings