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Exploring Health Care from Two Angles
By Barbara Spector
As a high school student in Hong Kong, Angela Man-Wei Cheung ’84 felt that physics was one of her weaker subjects. But at Bryn Mawr, it became her major. “The physics department had a way of teaching that was understandable — it was interesting and applicable to practical things,” she says.
Today, the practical applications of scientific knowledge are Cheung’s main focus as a medical and health policy researcher specializing in women’s postmenopausal health. Cheung is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Toronto. She also is the director of the University Health Network’s Osteoporosis Program and associate director of its Women’s Health Program. She holds an M.D. degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (1988) and a Ph.D. in health policy and decision sciences from Harvard University (1997). Cheung, a board-certified internist in the United States and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada, has received many awards for excellence in clinical work, research and education.
The liberal arts education she received at Bryn Mawr, combined with a physics curriculum that involved the use of nuclear magnetic resonance, inspired Cheung to pursue both of her interests simultaneously, she says. “My education at Bryn Mawr definitely helped me in my search for an interesting career.”
Supportive Environment
Cheung came to the United States to attend Bryn Mawr in 1981. “Initially, I missed home — hearing the language, eating the food,” she says. The homesickness faded as she forged friendships and became active in the Christian Fellowship. “We still keep in touch,” she says. “We were a very close-knit group.”
The small classes and supportive faculty enhanced the college experience, says Cheung, who cites physics professors Alfonso Albano and Peter Beckmann as her mentors. “Bryn Mawr was very nurturing,” she says. “There were lots of opportunities to do neat and unique things.”
In 1983, Bryn Mawr’s biology department helped Cheung obtain a summer position doing molecular biology research at the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Md. She participated in studies of Drosophila melanogaster and gained experience in the use of Western blots and the ELISA assay. By this time, Cheung had decided to pursue a career in medical research; she entered medical school in 1984.
Cheung’s parents had immigrated to Canada while she was in medical school; she moved there to join them after graduating. She did an internship in internal medicine at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto in 1988-89, residencies at St. Michael’s and the Toronto Hospital from 1989 to 1991, and a fellowship in general internal medicine at Toronto Hospital in 1991-92.
A Developing Interest
Women’s health was not recognized as a major research area until the early 1990s. But Cheung recognized that physiological, psychosocial, cultural and environmental factors influenced women’s response to medical treatment — and that these factors have different effects in female versus male patients.
Cheung’s clinical experience inspired her to further her knowledge of public health. While a physician can help patients on an individual basis, “You have more impact if you work in health policy,” Cheung says. She decided to pursue a doctorate in health policy because, she explains, “To be really skilled at doing this type of research, you need further training — a master’s is not enough.”
Cheung moved to Boston in 1992 to pursue her Ph.D. at Harvard. From 1992 to 1994, she was a fellow in the Clinical Effectiveness Program at Harvard School of Public Health. She also continued to practice medicine as a clinical and research fellow at New England Deaconess Hospital from 1992 to 1996.
Dual Career
When Cheung returned to Canada, she took a position at the University of Toronto and embarked on her dual-focus clinical and research career. On the clinical side, she’s currently investigating the use of vitamin K in postmenopausal women, the impact of antiretroviral therapy on bone density and osteoporosis in HIV-positive women, and tamoxifen and raloxifene for breast cancer prevention, among other topics. Her health-policy studies include investigations of health-promotion strategies among Chinese and East Indian immigrant women, the shift from home care to institutional care for stroke patients, a program to promote screening for cervical and breast cancer in homeless women, and emotional distress in caregivers.
Since 2000, Cheung has held an appointment in the department of economics at the University of Guelph, where she supervises graduate students using computer models to forecast health-care cost-effectiveness.
Cheung estimates that she spends 25 percent of her time on clinical practice and 75 percent on research. Balancing the two is a challenge, she says. “The clinical work always takes precedence,” she notes. “If someone calls with an acute problem, the research work will have to wait.”
Added to this mix are the responsibilities of a young family. Cheung and her husband, Stephen Hwang — a medical researcher at the University of Toronto — have three children aged 6, 3 and 6 months. At times, Cheung acknowledges with a laugh, “Life is crazy.”
About the Author
Barbara Spector writes on science and technology as well as business topics. She is the executive editor of Family Business magazine and former editor of The Scientist.
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