Wen-ying Sylvia Chou, PhD, MPH
Cancer Prevention Fellow
Wen-ying Sylvia Chou is a Cancer Prevention Fellow in the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch at the NCI. She has interests in the triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methods in studying health communication, health disparities, and cancer survivorship. As a sociolinguist, she specializes in patient-provider interactions and narrative analysis of personal illness stories. Dr. Chou’s doctoral dissertation examines end-of-life discourse through an ethnographically-based linguistic analysis of clinical interactions between terminally-ill cancer patients and their caregivers. She has maintained an active role in community-based organizations, integrating research, education, and services for the Chinese American community of cancer patients and caregivers.
Dr. Chou joined the Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program in June 2007. Currently she is engaged in an analysis of videotaped patient-provider communication about colorectal cancer screening between primary care physicians and their patients, aiming to identify the linguistic components that make up these discussions to explicate the decision-making process and motivating factors for screening participation. Together with a team of NCI researchers, she is also conducting a narrative analysis of on-line personal stories posted by cancer survivors in an effort to better understand the emerging interactive communication media and their role in building virtual support networks. Specifically, she is interested in tracing the expression of agency and causality in personal narratives about cancer. In another project, she is analyzing data from the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS), examining the current use of social media in the US and its relationship with health-related outcomes such as cancer knowledge and screening behavior.
Dr. Chou holds a MS and PhD in linguistics from Georgetown University and a BA in Music in piano performance from Santa Clara University, CA. She received a Master’s in Public Health from UC Berkeley in 2008.
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