Anthony L-T Chen, MD, MPH
Anthony Chen is a family physician and Director of Health of the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. He has strong interests in community health planning and program development, quality and systems improvement, access to health care, and cross-cultural medicine and cultural competency in health care.
He grew up in Southeast Asia and the Pacific before attending boarding school in New Hampshire and the University of Michigan. After medical school at Duke University, he completed Family Medicine residency at the University of Cincinnati followed by a Faculty Development Fellowship at Duke University.
After three years in the Chicago area, Dr Chen moved to Seattle where he practiced comprehensive family medicine for 12 years in public health and community clinic settings while participating in family medicine education in various capacities. He also held leadership roles in local and national efforts on hepatitis B immunization and liver cancer
prevention in Asians and other community issues.
In 2005, he moved to Boston to complete the Commonwealth Fund/Harvard University Fellowship in Minority Health Policy and obtain a Masters of Public Health at Harvard School of Public Health. From 2006 to 2008, he worked in clinical care, administration, and community programs at a large public health care system while teaching at the Tufts University Family Medicine Residency Program and Harvard Medical School.
In October 2008, Dr Chen returned to the Puget Sound area as the Director of Health of the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. He serves on several public health committees; statewide immunization work groups; regional planning bodies; and local, state, and congressional district committees on health care access and reform. He remains academically active with the Madigan Army Medical Center Public Health Residency and University of Washington School of Public Health. He is one of the principal investigators of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded Practice-Based Research Network study on local public health decisions made during a financial crisis and their impact on evidence-based public health practice.
To contact the Office of the Director:
(253) 798-2899
