In honor of National Postdoc Appreciation Week (NPAW), we spoke to post-doctoral fellow Daniel Hyung Jik Lee.
Daniel Hyung Jik Lee a post-doctoral fellow at the School of Social Work, where he is involved in several research projects. The first is a NIMH funded project that investigates whether the parent peer navigation program promotes access and retention of children in mental health services. The second project is evaluating the effectiveness of Kinship Navigator programs in Child, Youth, and Family services. In both projects, the research team is collaborating with local agencies, Allegheny Family Network and A Second Chance Inc. Lee is also working with a faculty members Rafael Engel and Daniel Rosen examining the aftermath of the Tree of Life incident. Recently, they had their first journal article published in JAMA Network Open. There will be additional research to assess the unmet mental health needs in the community, and to provide interventions to resolve them.
Lee’s main research interest is in racial/ethnic disparities in mental health, especially the unmet mental health needs in Asian Americans. His dissertation was on the mental health service utilization among Asian Americans, and he is currently writing a book chapter specifically examining the factors on mental health service use in Korean Americans. In Pittsburgh, he has been helping Koreans and their families access medical services by providing interpretation.
Lee is also teaching the Evaluative research and Community Based Participatory Research classes this fall semester and is excited to have the opportunity to convert his research experience into teaching. His goal for his classes is to help the MSW students find research fun and valuable.
Lee shares: “As an international student, I first came to Pittsburgh in 2010. It didn’t take long to fall in love with the city, and since then it became my second hometown. So, I was grateful to extend my stay as a post-doc. One of the desire/goals that I have is to make Pittsburgh a more diverse/vibrant city attractive to minorities who will enrich the culture and benefit the economy. Bottom line, I hope more people get to know this beautiful place and fall in love with it just as I did.”
He says he considers himself “an ambassador of Korean culture, especially Korean food, I enjoy cooking and introducing Korean dishes to my friends. Hopefully this COVID-19 situation ends soon, and I will have more chances to invite people to a new world of taste.”