Wenhui Feng

Wenhui Feng holds dual roles as the Tufts Health Plan Professor of Health Care Policy Research and Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. As of April 2023, she also serves as an Assistant Professor in the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. Her work focuses on obesity policy, welfare program analysis, and health equity. She earned her PhD in Public Administration from the University at Albany (2019), MPP from Arizona State University (2013), and BA from South University of Science and Technology of China (2011).

Key research interests include policy feasibility for obesity prevention, state welfare rules’ impact on health outcomes, and federal initiatives like menu labeling and SNAP. She has conducted studies on dollar store expansion’s role in food access, opioid crisis vulnerabilities, and administrative burdens in safety-net programs. Her grants include USDA-funded research on household expenditures at dollar stores and CDC-supported studies on Wyoming’s opioid crisis.

Dr. Feng teaches courses in health economics, policy analysis, and public health action. She has received awards such as the Rockefeller College Scholarship and Fred Tickner Memorial Scholarship. Her professional activities include presentations on local health department policy adoption and memberships in organizations like the American Society of Health Economics and AcademyHealth.

Her work bridges academic research and policy impact, with a focus on marginalized communities’ access to healthcare and nutritious food. She collaborates on initiatives like pandemic-era SNAP benefits and evaluates policy innovations at both local and federal levels.