Hao Tong

Hao Tong, MD, is a first-generation college graduate from Seattle and a Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. She completed her undergraduate studies, medical school, and Internal Medicine residency at the University of Washington, where she also served as Chief Resident. Currently, she is also pursuing a Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology at Penn, equipping her with advanced quantitative and qualitative research methods to apply to questions of health equity and health systems improvement.

Under the mentorship of Dr. Joanna Hart at Penn’s Palliative and Advanced Illness Research (PAIR) Center, Dr. Tong’s research centers on language equity in healthcare, with a particular focus on patients with limited English proficiency. Her work explores how language-concordant patient-clinician pairings form in outpatient care, what motivates patients and clinicians to seek these relationships, and how such concordance influences patient outcomes, physician professional identity, and well-being. She is also interested in developing health system interventions to support multilingual clinicians and improve equitable care delivery. By combining her clinical expertise with rigorous epidemiologic methods, she aims to advance patient-centered approaches that bridge language barriers and reduce disparities in healthcare.

Outside of medicine, she enjoys exploring different cultural cuisines and spending time outdoors with her husband and 85lb Goldendoodle.