Research

Sun Jae Jung, MD, MS, PhD

Sun Jae Jung, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Yonsei University College of Medicine, Korea, where she teaches epidemiological methods and causal inference.

Her research program seeks to elucidate the mutual association between mental health and physical health using advanced epidemiological methods. Recent work has focused on the bi-directional association between cardiovascular, endocrine, and reproductive health and major mental health problems including post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder. Another major focus of her work has been on the interaction between biological and social factors in explaining suicide attempts. Dr. Jung serves as Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator for several research studies that have received in excess of $8 million from the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare and other national agencies. In 2021 she received the Hyungwoodang Young Epidemiologist Award from the Korean Society of Epidemiology Dr. Jung completed her MD from Yonsei University College of Medicine and received her professional qualification in Preventive Medicine from Seoul National University College of Medicine. She also holds a PhD in Epidemiology from Seoul National University and was a Yerby Fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Topics of interest:

Epidemiology; Mental Health; Depression; PTSD; Suicide; Dementia; Schizophrenia; Bipolar disorder; Psychiatric epidemiology; Hormone; Preventive Medicine; Network analysis; Genetic Epidemiology; Longitudinal Study; Resilience/Psychological Well-Being; Psychologic Resilience; Lifestyle factors; Lifestyle modification; Digital mental health; Behavior change; Cardiovascular epidemiology; Health behaviors; Advanced statistical methods; Predictive analytics; Metabolomics

Data sources

Exclusive: CMERC, CC-MHS, NK refugee cohort, Kangwha cohort, Sewol cohort, COVID-19 mental health screening in National Center for Disaster and Trauma

Public(from S. Korea): NHIS (PTSD cohort, Bipolar cohort, Caner-mental health cohort, Maternity-child mental health cohort, Health examinee cohort, Elderly cohort, Working women cohort), KoGES, HEXA, KCHS, KNHANES, KoSIS, KYRBS and others

Public(from global source): Nurses health study II, UK Biobank, HAALSI cohort, WHIS and others

Research Topics (Also, please see “Publications” Section)

1. Depressive symptoms and depressive disorders: focusing on the role of female reproductive factors and depression heterogeneity
2. PTSD and trauma vs. physical health
3. Psychological resilience
4. Sleep and sedative-hypnotics
5. Suicide research
6. Inflammation, biomarker, and mental health
7. Dementia and cognitive function
8. Childhood and adolescent mental health
9. COVID-19 and population mental health
10. Epidemiological method and modeling
11. Cardiovascular health and other disease epidemiology
12. Global health including refugee’s mental health
13. Serious mental disease (Schizophrenia, bipolar) epidemiology (currently developing)