Tina Lee Cheng

Cheng, a director of the department of pediatrics and Given Foundation Professor of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins was born in Toledo, Ohio. She earned her B.A. and M.D. from Brown University in 1983 and 1986 respectively, and her M.P.H. with a focus in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1991.

After finishing a residency and serving as chief resident in pediatrics in 1990, both at the University of California, San Francisco and the San Francisco General Hospital, Cheng completed a residency in preventive medicine and a general academics pediatrics fellowship at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in 1993.

In 1993, Cheng was named assistant professor at the Children’s National Medical Center, George Washington University School of Medicine in the department of pediatrics and at the George Washington University School of Public Health in the department of prevention and community health, maternal and child health, and health promotion-disease prevention. From 1995 to 2002, Cheng founded and served as director of the Generations Program, Comprehensive Care for Teen Parents and their Children, at the Children’s National Medical Center. Beginning in 2001, Cheng served as director of research and of community-based research at the Diana L. and Stephen A. Goldberg Center for Community Pediatric Health. In 2002, she was promoted to associate professor at both the George Washington University School of Medicine and the George Washington University School of Public Health.

In 2002, Cheng accepted the position of division chief of general pediatrics and adolescent medicine in the department of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine with the rank of associate professor. She received a joint appointment in the department of population, reproductive, and family health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She was promoted to full professor in 2008 and named chair of the department of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. In 2013, Cheng was named vice-chair in pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Also in 2013, she founded and served as co-director of Centro Sol: Johns Hopkins Center for Salud/Health and Opportunity for Latinos. In 2014, she became co-founder and director for the Johns Hopkins Rales Center for the Integration of Health and Education. Cheng was named Given Professor of Pediatrics and director of the department of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and pediatrician-in-chief at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in 2016. She was a writing fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, Italy in 2017. In 2020, Cheng accepted the positions of B.K. Rachford Professor of Pediatrics and chair of the department of pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati, director of the Cincinnati Children’s Research Foundation, and chief medical officer at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

Cheng’s clinical work, teaching, and research focus on child, adolescent, and family perspectives on improving health, and community-integrated models to interrupt the intergenerational cycle of disadvantage. For fifteen years, she co-led the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded DC Baltimore Research Center on Child Health Disparities, which outlined a research action agenda on child health equity. Cheng has over 200 publications and has served as the principal investigator on numerous federal and foundation grants. She wrote legislation establishing the Maryland Maternal Child Health Task Force and co-led the task force in 2019, which led to multiple recommendations adopted by the state to elevate issues in maternal and child health. Cheng has served as president of the Academic Pediatric Association and has held numerous leadership roles in that organization as well as in the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs, and on NIH committees. She has received numerous awards including the American Academy of Pediatrics Education Award, the Job Lewis Smith Award for Community Pediatrics, and the Academic Pediatrics Association Advocacy and Public Health Policy Award. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and is a member of the Forum for Children’s Well-Being.