The Asian American / Asian Research Institute welcomes Dr. John J. Chin as the newly appointed interim dean of the Institute. Dr. Chin served as department chair of Urban Policy & Planning at Hunter College/CUNY.
Dr. Chin’s research focuses on access to social and health services for under-served urban communities, particularly Asian immigrant communities. He is also interested in how key community-based institutions in immigrant and minority communities shape community values and norms, particularly in relation to controversial or sensitive topics, like HIV. His NIH-funded research has examined the role of Asian immigrant-led community institutions in delivering HIV prevention and stigma-reduction messages to their constituents. He recently completed an NIH-funded study of HIV risk, working conditions, and experiences with law enforcement for Asian immigrant women working in massage parlors in New York City and Los Angeles County. He serves as the principal investigator of the Hunter College AANAPISI Project (HCAP), funded through two grants from the U.S. Department of Education’s Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions Program.
Dr. Chin was a member of the National Institutes of Health Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council and is currently the chair of the National Advisory Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Research Scholars Program. Prior to his academic career, he helped found the Asian & Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS (now a Federally Qualified Health Center known as Apicha Community Health Center, with locations in Manhattan and Queens), where he served as deputy executive director. He also worked in the NYC Office of the Comptroller and the NYC Commission on Human Rights. He earned a B.A. from Cornell University, an M.S. in Urban Policy Analysis from the New School for Social Research, and a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from Columbia University.
