Department of Research & Evaluation News

Kevin Yu, PhD, is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Research & Evaluation at Kaiser Permanente Southern California. He earned his PhD in health informatics from Northwestern University, where his work focused on pharmacoepidemiology and health informatics. His research focuses on cardiovascular disease and dementia, with a particular interest in target trial emulation methods and the application of machine learning and AI to clinical prediction problems.

What inspired you to pursue research?

Research, to me, is fundamentally a process of understanding and solving problems. My interest in cardiovascular health grew out of family experience with cardiovascular disease, which gave me an early, personal sense of how much room there still is to improve prevention and treatment. That is what eventually led me into pharmacoepidemiology and health informatics, where I could work on exactly those questions at scale.

Why did you come to the Department of Research & Evaluation to pursue your postdoctoral training?

I came to the Department of Research & Evaluation for 3 main reasons. First, the type of research being done here aligns closely with my own interests, such as hypertension treatment and the use of real-world data at a scale that is hard to find elsewhere. Second, being embedded within the health system itself means I can work on projects that are more directly impactful and can affect actual clinical and operational decisions. Finally, I was drawn by the diverse mentorship here. Working alongside investigators with deep expertise in cardiovascular epidemiology and implementation science has helped me further grow my own research program and prepare for a future career as an independent investigator.

What research are you currently working on that you are most excited about?

Right now, I am most excited about two projects. The first focuses on characterizing real-world home blood pressure monitoring patterns. Recent blood pressure management guidelines have elevated the role of home monitoring, but we still know surprisingly little about how patients actually use it outside the clinic. I am also using unsupervised machine learning to derive blood pressure phenotypes that are associated with kidney function decline and cardiovascular outcomes. The second is a study on antihypertensive pharmacotherapy and cardiovascular risk in young adults. Hypertension in young adulthood is understudied relative to older populations, even though early treatment decisions can shape decades of cardiovascular risk.

What is your ultimate dream for your career?

I am interested in developing next-generation data cohorts for cardiovascular and dementia research, including cohorts that incorporate novel data sources. I want to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to facilitate research using these data and, just as importantly, to make sure the findings are integrated into health systems and clinical practice.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

Outside of research, I love to host dinner parties and cook for friends. Living in the Bay Area, I also enjoy getting outdoors on nature hikes and exploring new food spots around the region.

Photo: Dr. Yu in Zion National Park