Yong-Fang Kuo, PhD
Professor and Chair
Department of Biostatistics & Data Science
Director, Office of Biostatistics & Data Science

Physical address:
UHC, Suite 4.208
1005 Harborside Drive
Galveston, TX

Mailing address:
301 University Boulevard
Galveston, TX 77555-1150

Phone: (409) 772-5276
Fax: (409) 772-5272
Email: yokuo@utmb.edu

  • Dr. Kuo is the Don W. and Frances Powell Professor in Aging Research and the director of the Office Biostatistics. Her research assesses patterns of care, treatment toxicities, and health outcomes using a variety of large data sets. She also examines health care delivery focused on hospitalist care and its impact, and the use and effectiveness of primary care provided by nurse practitioners in communities and nursing homes. In addition, she study effectiveness and safety of opioid and benzodiazepine substitutes. Her research is widely published in medical and health services research journals. Kuo’s research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. As a biostatistician, she is awarded as the principal investigator or serves as the director of Biostatistics and Analysis Core for several center grants funded by NIH and Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. She has been a biostatistics mentor for more than 100 trainees including junior faculty, pre-doc and post-doc fellows. Her expertise is in the analyses for comparative effectiveness research, pharmacoepidemiology, and health outcome studies.

    Curriculum Vitae - CV

    • PhD, Biostatistics, Ohio State University, 1997
    • MAS, Applied Statistics, Ohio State University, 1994
    • MEd, Health Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan, 198
    • BS, Nursing, Taipei Medical College, Taipei, Taiwan, 1984

    • Comparative effectiveness research
    • Health services research
    • Cancer outcomes research
    • Health policy research
    • Pharmacoepidemiology
    • Developing/refining algorithms and prediction models
    • Department of Preventive Medicine and Population Health
    • Office of Biostatistics
    • Department of Internal Medicine, Geriatric Division
    • Sealy Center on Aging
    1. Tzeng HM, Raji MA, Chou LN, Kuo YF. Impact of State Nurse Practitioner Regulations on Potentially Inappropriate Medication Prescribing Between Physicians and Nurse Practitioners: A National Study in the United States. J Nurs Care Qual. 2022 Jan-Mar 01;37(1):6-13.
    2. Guo F, Scholl M, Fuchs EL, Berenson AB, Kuo YF. BRCA testing and testing results among women 18-65 years old. Prev Med Rep. 2022 Feb 19;26:101738.
    3. Priyadarshni S, Westra J, Kuo YF, Baillargeon J, Khalife W, Raji M. COVID-19 infection and incidence of myocarditis: A multi-site population-based propensity score matched analysis. Cureus. 2022 Feb 3;14(2):e21879.
    4. Gibson DC, Raji MA, Holmes HM, Baillargeon JG, Kuo YF. Risk of opioid-related emergency department visit or hospitalization among older breast, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancer survivors. Mayo Clin Proc. 2022 Mar;97(3):560-570.
    5. Polychronopoulou E, Kuo YF, Wilkes D, Raji MA. Prescribing of gabapentinoids with or without opioids after burn injuiry in the US, 2012-2018. Burn. 2022 Mar;48(2):293-302.
    6. Milani SA, Raji MA, Kuo YF, Lopez DS, Markides KS, Al Snih S. Multimorbidity is associated with pain over 6 years among community dwelling Mexican American age 80 and older. Front Pain Res (Lausanne). 2022 Mar 23;3;830308.
    7. Guo F, Hirth JM, Fuchs EL, Cofie LE, Brown V, Kuo YF, Fernandez ME, Berenson AB. Knowledge, attitude, willingness to pay, and patient preference about genetic testing and subsequent risk management for cancer prevention. J Cancer Educ. 2022 Apr;37(2):362-369.
    8. Weiser R, Polychronopoulou E, Hatch SS, Haque W, Ghani HA, He J, Kuo YF, Gradishar WJ, Klimberg VS. Adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with invasive lobular carcinoma and use of the 21-gene recurrence score: A national cancer database analysis. Cancer. 2022 May 1;128(9):1738-1747.
    9. Malik S, Kaushik C, Heidelman E, Polychronopoulou E, Kuo YF, Sharma G, Nishi SPE. Characteristics and Factors Associated With Mortality in Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019 and Pneumothorax. Mayo Clin Proc Innov Qual Outcomes. 2022 Jun;6(3):257-268.
    10. Li CY, Arthur P, Downer B, Velozo CA, Kuo YF, Tzeng HM, Ottenbacher KJ. Examining the Clinical Utility of the Brief Interview for Mental Status. Res Gerontol Nurs. 2022 May-Jun;15(3):124-130.
    11. Polychronopoulou E, Giordano SH, Chou LN, Yu X, Kuo YF. Signal Detection of Adverse Events Associated with Trastuzumab in a Cohort of Elderly Patients with Breast Cancer. Oncologist. 2022 Jun 8;27(6):434-440. 
    12. Okereke IC, Westra J, Tyler D, Klimberg S, Jupiter D, Venkatesan R, Brooks K, Kuo YF. Disparities in esophageal cancer care based on race: a National Cancer Database analysis. Dis Esophagus. 2022 Jun 15;35(6):doab083. 
    13. Hsu E, Malagaris I, Kuo YF, Sultana R, Roberts K. Deep learning-based NLP data pipeline for EHR-scanned document information extraction. JAMIA Open. 2022 Jun 11;5(2):ooac045. 
    14. Singal AK, Kuo YF, Arab JP, Bataller R. Racial and Health Disparities among Cirrhosis-related Hospitalizations in the USA. J Clin Transl Hepatol. 2022 Jun 28;10(3):398-404. 
    15. Raji MA, Priyadarshni S, Yu X, Digbeu B, Kuo YF. Association of Medication-Assisted Therapy with New Onset of Cardiac Arrhythmia in Patients Diagnosed with Opioid Use Disorders. Am J Med. 2022 Jul;135(7):864-870.
    16. Kuo YF, Liaw V, Yu X, Raji MA. Opioid and Benzodiazepine Substitutes: Impact on Drug Overdose Mortality in Medicare Population. Am J Med. 2022 Jul;135(7):e194-e206. 
    17. Singal AK, Kuo YF, Waleed M, Wong RJ, Sundaram V, Jalan R. High-risk liver transplant recipients with grade 3 acute on chronic liver failure should receive the good quality graft. Liver Int. 2022 Jul;42(7):1629-1637.
    18. Singal AK, Kuo YF, Kwo P, Mahmud N, Sharma P, Nadim MK. Impact of medical eligibility criteria and OPTN policy on simultaneous liver kidney allocation and utilization. Clin Transplant. 2022 Jul;36(7):e14700. 
    19. Yu X, Baillargeon J, Berenson AB, Westra JR, Giordano TP, Kuo YF. Incident depression among Medicare beneficiaries with disabilities and HIV. AIDS. 2022 Jul 15;36(9):1295-1304. 
    20. Pritchard KT, Downer B, Raji MA, Baillargeon J, Kuo YF. Incident Functional Limitations Among Community-Dwelling Adults Using Opioids: A Retrospective Cohort Study Using a Propensity Analysis with the Health and Retirement Study. Drugs Aging. 2022 Jul;39(7):559-571. 
    21. Lopez DS, Kim H, Polychronopoulou E, Taha S, Tsilidis KK, Villasante-Tezanos A, Peek MK, Gilani S, Khera M, Baillargeon J, Kuo YF, Canfield S. Joint association of statins and testosterone replacement therapy with cardiovascular disease among older men with prostate cancer: SEER-Medicare 2007-2015. Cancer Epidemiol. 2022 Aug;79:102172. 
    22. Westra J, Raji M, Kuo YF. National patterns of cessation of prescription opioids among Medicare beneficiaries, 2013-2018. Medicine (Baltimore). 2022 Aug 26;101(34):e29944

    PubMed