Wen-Ying Sylvia Chou, PhD, MPH

After an 18-year NIH career overseeing a health communication research portfolio, Sylvia is building a research program on relationship-centered communication that is responsive to current societal trends, including polarization, distrust in institutions, and health inequities.   

Wen-Ying Sylvia Chou, PhD, MPH served as a Program Director in the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch of the Behavioral Research Program at National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, for nearly 16 years.  In January 2026 she resigned from her government position in protest of the loss of scientific integrity at the NIH. 

As a prolific health communication scholar with over 125 peer-reviewed publications, her seminal research on misinformation, social media, and end-of-life discourse have been referenced in major media outlets including the New York Times, the Atlantic, and the Washington Post.  As a science administrator, Sylvia oversaw a portfolio of funded research at the intersection of cancer control, technology, and health communication.  She led numerous NIH initiatives on the role of technology in public health, including the 2023 NIH Common Fund Program entitled “Advancing Health Communication Research and Practice” and other Notices of Funding Opportunities related to the changing communication landscape.  Her recent research interests included understanding and addressing the spread of health misinformation, relationship-centered health communication, social media, and the use of mixed methods in supporting patient-centered health research.  Dr. Chou holds a M.S. and Ph.D. in Linguistics from Georgetown University, a Master in Public Health from UC Berkeley, and a Bachelor’s degree in music performance from Santa Clara University.  She completed a postdoctoral fellowship as part of NCI’s Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program.

After witnessing harmful policies at the NIH throughout 2025, Sylvia joined the other 91 NIH scientists as a named signer of the Bethesda Declaration and actively joined efforts to uphold the NIH mission and protect science from politicization.  She has remained outspoken in the media in support of science and democracy and is currently writing a book about the resistance movement across the federal government and academia together with Dr. Jenna Norton.