Jessica Cheung
Jessica Cheung is a rising senior at Wellesley College pursuing a BS in Economics with a minor in French. She is passionate about advancing health equity and promoting aging with dignity, with a particular interest in how socioeconomic factors shape health outcomes, healthcare access, and end-of-life care for older adults. After graduation, she hopes to pursue a career at the intersection of health policy, health economics, and law.
During the SUMR program, Jessica works with Dr. Ari Friedman on a project using large language models to improve the detection of cognitive impairment in emergency department and primary care settings. By refining an LLM-administered cognitive screening tool, her work supports research aimed at making early detection more accessible, efficient, and equitable for older adults.
Jessica also works with Dr. Carolyn Cannuscio’s lab on an NIH-funded project studying the role of public libraries in the overdose crisis. The project is building a national Public Libraries Cohort to study naloxone uptake, track overdose outcomes, and strengthen overdose response readiness, supporting community-engaged research to improve equitable access to lifesaving resources.
At Wellesley, Jessica serves as an intermediate microeconomics course tutor and is a member of the Federal Reserve College Challenge team. Her research experience also includes work with the MIT Health Equity Group, where she examined dementia-related hospitalization and mortality across Boston neighborhoods and analyzed how socioeconomic factors contribute to disparities in aging-related care.
In her free time, Jessica enjoys playing tennis, reading, and trying new restaurants.