Elizabeth Chen

Liz Chen is an associate professor in the Department of Health Behavior at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and also serves as the Health Behavior MPH Concentration Lead. Dr. Chen has over a decade of experience as a teacher, public health practitioner, and researcher and earned both her MPH and PhD degrees in this department. Dr. Chen’s research interests are at the intersection of adolescent health, technology and design thinking (i.e. human-centered design). Her current research focuses on how to integrate design thinking mindsets and methodologies into public health training, practice, and research. Dr. Chen has a pan-campus role at Innovate Carolina, UNC-CH's our office of Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Development and serves as the director for the university’s graduate Certificate in Innovation for the Public Good. A native of Westwood, MA, Dr. Chen served as a high school science teacher through Teach For America in Eastern North Carolina before starting her public health training. She was also named to the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 class for Social Entrepreneurship for her work in developing and launching the Real Talk storytelling app for teens.