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Katherine Yun MD, MHS

Faculty Member

Katherine Yun (she/her) is a faculty member at PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, an attending physician in both the Division of General Pediatrics and the Refugee Health Program at CHOP, and director of the Academic General Pediatrics Fellowship at CHOP. 

  • We need to ensure that the health system works well for ALL children, including children in low income families, children from historically marginalized groups, and children of immigrants.  My colleagues at PolicyLab get this, making it a rich and collaborative environment for researchers focused on addressing health disparities.

  • One in every four children in the US has a parent who immigrated to the US. These children are an incredibly important part of our nation's future. Developing evidence-based programs to make sure that children in immigrant families have access to preventive health care is what drives me.

Katherine Yun’s primary interest is refugee and immigrant health, specifically the well-being of children in immigrant families in the United States. Her work has focused on the prevalence of chronic, non-communicable conditions and insurance coverage among refugees in the US, differences in primary and dental care utilization by children in different types of immigrant families, and evaluation of health care navigation and related programs for refugee communities. Current projects seek to address language barriers in behavioral health care and blunt the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on refugees and migrants.

Dr. Yun received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School in 2006 and completed her residency in pediatrics at Yale University in 2009. Between 2009-2011, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar and earned her Masters in Health Sciences Research from the Yale University School of Medicine. While at Yale, she was the supervising physician in the Yale-New Haven Hospital Pediatric Refugee Clinic, a co-recipient of Connecticut’s Myra M. Oliver Award for going “above the call of duty” to support refugees and immigrants. CHOP’s Refugee Health Program, led by Dr. Mary Fabio, is a recipient of the Gold Door Award from HIAS-PA, “Honoring those who lead the way in support of immigrants and refugees.”

Dr. Yun has also worked in Europe, where she supported research on the health impact of human trafficking, and Central Asia, where she taught middle school. From 2014-2018, Dr. Yun served on the Executive Committee of the Section on International Child Health at the American Academy of Pediatrics. She currently serves on the Research, Evaluation, and Ethics Committee for the Society of Refugee Healthcare Providers. Dr. Yun and her husband live in Philadelphia, PA.