Common Place
Illustrator Julia Kuo joins two University of Chicago physicians and researchers, Monica E. Peek and Elizabeth L. Tung of the Department of Medicine, for Common Place, a Gray Center Mellon Collaborative Fellowship that considers how illustration might play a role in examining the barriers that difference and distrust can form between patients and their doctors.
Julia Kuo
Fellow
Monica E. Peek
Fellow
Elizabeth L. Tung
Fellow
Julia Kuo
Julia Kuo is a Taiwanese-American illustrator who has worked with the New York Times, Google, National Public Radio (Science Friday), the Chicago Public Library, Scholastic, and Hachette Book Group. Julia has taught illustration courses at Columbia College Chicago and at her alma mater, Washington University in St. Louis. She was the visual arm of Chicago’s 2017 March for Science and has had the honor of being an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts in 2014 and in 2017. She is a widely published editorial illustrator, with a special interest in visual storytelling and activism on both a local and national scale.
Monica E. Peek
Monica Peek is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and Biological Sciences Division at the University of Chicago. Dr. Peek is a practicing physician and the Principal Investigator of a multi-site intervention funded by an NIDDK R18 grant and the Merck Foundation to improve diabetes care and outcomes on the South Side of Chicago, focusing on primarily working class African-American communities with significant disparities in diabetes health outcomes such as lower extremity amputations. The intervention utilizes an integrated approach that includes culturally tailored patient activation training, a diabetes quality improvement collaborative (e.g. implementing care coordination), cultural competency/communication training for clinicians and enhanced community partnerships (e.g. utilizing food prescription/vouchers redeemable at local farmer’s markets and grocers). This work has been recognized as a best-practice model for healthcare-community partnerships and was featured in Time Magazine in 2016.
Elizabeth L. Tung
Elizabeth Tung is a junior faculty member in the Department of Medicine and Biological Sciences Division at the University of Chicago. Dr. Tung is a practicing physician and the Principal Investigator of research studies funded by an AHRQ K12 grant and NIDDK P30 pilot grant to examine community violence as a social risk factor for chronic diseases. She is also a faculty mentor at the Hyde Park Institute’s Scholars in Ethics and Medicine Program, a program for undergraduate and medical students to cultivate humanism in the ethical practice of medicine. Dr. Tung’s research focuses on health disparities in chronic disease burden and outcomes, with a special interest in the intersectionality of race, place, and poverty. Her work has been featured on PRI’s The World, WBEZ’s Morning Shift, and NPR’s All Things Considered. She has published on topics such as implicit bias, retail redlining, and social isolation. Dr. Tung is currently applying geospatial analytical tools to bridge the worlds of social epidemiology and health.