Claire Townsend Ing, DrPH
Assistant Professor
Research Division
Phone: (808) 692-1042
Email: clairemt@hawaii.edu
Dr. Ing is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Native Hawaiian Health in the John A Burns School of Medicine. Her long held academic and research interests are in health disparities informed by a social determinants framework. She received a BA in Anthropology from Pomona College, a MPH in Health Behavior and Health Education from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a DrPH in Community-based and Translational Research from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Dr. Ing served as the coordinator for several community-based participatory research (CBPR) projects at the Department of Native Hawaiian Health. Notable among these was a 12-year, NIMHD-funded, CBPR initiative to address obesity and related disparities in Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Peoples. We adapted, tested, and disseminated two culturally congruent, evidence-based health promotion programs. As an Assistant Professor since 2015, she has secured funding to test the effectiveness of a semi-structured social support group in maintaining or improving diabetes management, adapt an evidence-based healthy lifestyle intervention for web-based delivery, and examine psychosocial determinants of hypertension. Most recently, she was awarded a career development supplement from NHLBI to examine the impact of neighborhoods on systolic blood pressure and cardiovascular disease risk in Native Hawaiians. This supplement also aims to better understand how Native Hawaiians perceive their neighborhoods in relation to their ability to make healthy lifestyle changes. Dr. Ing hopes to continue to build a research program that uses systems science to understand and address health disparities.
