Jin Yung Bae
Jin Yung Bae
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Clinical Associate Professor of Public Health Policy and Management
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Professional overview
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Jean Bae is a lawyer and a policy researcher focused on understanding state or local differences in public health laws and how those differences relate to geographic, political, socioeconomic, and racial/ethnic characteristics of the jurisdictions. Her areas of expertise include healthcare access and utilization, immigrant health, reproductive health, firearm and alcohol regulation, as well as criminal justice.
Prior to joining NYU as a faculty member, Professor Bae worked as a litigation attorney in both corporate and non-profit sectors. She obtained MPH in NYU School of Global Public Health and spent 4 years as a project director on a National Institute of Health (NIH)-sponsored study to identify patterns in the fifty states’ adoption of evidence-based public health laws over a ten-year period.
Professor Bae has comprehensive understanding of how policy decisions are made and what kind of challenges may arise on the ground when implementing policies. She worked as a senior policy analyst at NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for 4 years, where she helped implement ActionHealthNYC, the city’s pilot direct access program for undocumented immigrants, and co-led a randomized controlled trial funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Robin Hood Foundation to evaluate its impact on care access and utilization. She also analyzed federal, state, and local policies pertaining to public and private insurance eligibility, benefit design, and financing.
As the Director of Policy and Legislative Affairs at the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, she oversaw numerous high-profile COVID-19 pandemic responses, including the $21.5 million immigrant emergency cash assistance program that was funded by the Open Society and the Robin Hood Foundation. She also supervised a research team to analyze the projected impact of the Trump-era public charge rule on NYC immigrants’ economic stability and health outcomes, which was cited in a federal appellate court’s decision.
Her current research topics include intersection between firearm and alcohol regulations, racial and socioeconomic disparity in financial burden resulting from criminal offenses, as well as post-Roe v. Wade abortion state law landscape and its impact on access to care.
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Education
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MPH, New York UniversityJD, Harvard Law School
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Publications
Publications
An assessment of court fees, surcharges, and penalties for alcohol-impaired driving in five midwestern U.S. states: implications for exacerbating poverty and health inequalities
AbstractSilver, D., Bae, J. Y., Furuya, E., & Macinko, J. (n.d.).Publication year
2024Journal title
Journal of Public Health PolicyVolume
45Issue
1Page(s)
58-73AbstractDriving under the influence (DUI) remains an important threat to public health in the United States, and a substantial literature has evaluated the effectiveness of state-mandated penalties. Researchers have overlooked accelerated use of obscured fees and surcharges levied by local and state court systems added to penalties in the past 15 years. We present data regarding DUI penalties for offenders with a blood alcohol content (BAC of 0.08) and the fees and surcharges attached to them in Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa, and variation in these within Wisconsin at four BAC levels. In all states, surcharges and fees exceed penalty fines substantially. Variation within Wisconsin is also meaningful. Our data suggest that opaque costs in state court systems add a substantial financial burden to DUI penalties, particularly for those with lower incomes. An appraisal of the deterrent role of these added costs is warranted.Protocol for creating a dataset of U.S. state alcohol-related firearm laws 2000–2022
AbstractSilver, D., Bae, J. Y., & Macinko, J. (n.d.).Publication year
2024Journal title
PloS oneVolume
19Issue
3AbstractFirearms are a major source of preventable morbidity and mortality in the United States, contributing to over 48,000 deaths in 2022 and generating societal costs in excess of $500 billion. A body of work has examined the relationship between US state level firearm laws and health outcomes, generally finding that some firearm regulations are associated with lower firearm-related mortality. Alcohol has been identified as an additional risk factor for both homicides and suicide and stronger state alcohol laws have been associated with lower rates of suicide. To date, there are no empirical studies that have investigated the impact of laws over a long period of time that target the intersection of alcohol and firearm. One reason for this may be because there is no existing dataset that includes the range of these state laws over time. This study describes the protocol for collecting, coding and operationalizing these legal data.Do alcohol policies affect everyone equally? An assessment of the effects of state policies on education-related patterns of alcohol use, 2011–2019
AbstractSilver, D., Bae, J. Y., McNeill, E., & Macinko, J. (n.d.).Publication year
2022Journal title
Drug and alcohol dependenceVolume
239AbstractBackground: Public policies are a powerful tool to change behaviors that may harm population health, but little is known about how state alcohol policies affect different population groups. This study assesses the effects of a comprehensive measure of the state alcohol regulatory environment (the State Alcohol Policy Score or SAPS) on heavy drinking—a risk factor for premature death—on different population groups, defined by levels of educational attainment, then by race/ethnicity, and sex. Methods: We pool each state's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS) 2011–2019 and use robust Poisson regression analyses that control for individual-level factors, state-level factors (1 year lagged SAPS score for each state, state fixed effects), and year fixed effects to assess the relationship between SAPS and heavy drinking behaviors by education group. Interaction terms test whether education moderates the relationship by race/ethnicity and gender. Results: SAPS scores increased 2010–2018, but substantial gaps persist between states. A 10 % increase in a state's alcohol policy score is associated with a 2 % lower prevalence in current drinking (APR=0.97, 95 % CI=0.97–0.97, p < 0.0011) although not for those with a high school education or less. A 10 % increase in the SAPS was associated with a 3 % lower prevalence of heavy drinking; interaction terms in models reveal that a 10 % increase in the SAPS was associated with a lower prevalence of heavy drinking among those with less than a college education. Conclusion: Narrowing gaps in alcohol policies between states may reduce heavy drinking among those with lower educational attainment.Action Health NYC: Effectiveness of a Health Care Access Program for the Uninsured, 2016-2017
AbstractSood, R. K., Bae, J. Y., Sabety, A., Chan, P. Y., & Heindrichs, C. (n.d.).Publication year
2021Journal title
American journal of public healthVolume
111Issue
7Page(s)
1318-1327AbstractObjectives. To evaluate the effectiveness of a novel health care access program (ActionHealthNYC) for uninsured immigrants. Methods. The evaluation was conducted as a randomized controlled trial in New York City from May 2016 through June 2017. Using baseline and follow-up survey data, we assessed health care access, patient experience, and health status. Results. At baseline, 25% of participants had a regular source of care; two thirds had visited a doctor in the past year and reported 2.5 visits in the past 12 months, on average. Nine to 12 months later, intervention participants were 1.2 times more likely to report having a primary care provider (58% vs 46%), were 1.2 times more likely to have seen a doctor in the past 9 months (91% vs 77%), and had 1.5 times more health care visits (4.1 vs 2.9) compared with control participants. Conclusions. ActionHealthNYC increased health care access among program participants.By the Letter of Law? The Effects of Administrative Adjudication for Resolving Disputes in NYC’s Restaurant Grading Initiative
AbstractSilver, D., Rothbart, M. W., & Bae, J. Y. (n.d.).Publication year
2021Journal title
American Review of Public AdministrationVolume
51Issue
8Page(s)
619-635AbstractAdministrative adjudication can serve as a quasi-judicial forum for resolving disputes resulting from government regulations. New York City recently required restaurants to post letter grades reflecting their compliance with food safety regulations and incorporated an easily accessible administrative adjudication system into its policy design. This study examines the implementation of this feature of the policy by using a regression discontinuity framework to explore the effects of the grading policy on adjudication processes and regulatory outcomes. Quantitative data included 222,527 food safety inspection records (2007–2014); qualitative data included interviews, observations, and document review. Restaurants were more likely to have violations reduced and grades improved at adjudication when grades were at stake. Moreover, adjudication outcomes were highly sensitive to score differences near grade cut-points. Professional representatives helped restaurants to negotiate the interpretation of rules in the quasi-judicial proceedings, softening rigidity of regulations. Representatives’ expertise was consistent with being “repeat players,” which may distort the use of such forums to ensure justice and fairness. This study illuminates the ramifications of including alternative dispute resolution systems in the implementation of regulatory policies.Evaluating the relationship between binge drinking rates and a replicable measure of U.S. State alcohol policy environments
AbstractSilver, D., Macinko, J., Giorgio, M., & Bae, J. Y. (n.d.).Publication year
2018Journal title
PloS oneVolume
14Issue
6AbstractExcessive alcohol consumption contributes significantly to premature mortality, injuries and morbidity, and a range of U.S. state policies have been shown to reduce these behaviors. Monitoring state alcohol policy environments is essential, but methodologically challenging given that new laws may be passed (or repealed) each year, resulting in considerable variation across states. Existing measures have not been made public or have only a single year available. We develop a new replicable measure, the state alcohol policy score, for each state and year 2004–2009, that captures the essential features of a state’s evidence-based alcohol policies. We evaluate its similarity to two existing alcohol policy measures and validate it by replicating findings from a previous study that used one of those measures to assess its relationship with several binge drinking outcomes. Estimates of the association between one-year lagged state alcohol policy scores and state binge drinking outcomes, obtained from the 2005–2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System surveys (n = 440,951, 2010), were produced using Generalized Linear Models that controlled for state and individual-level co-variates, with fixed effects for year and region. We find a 10-percent-age point increase in the state alcohol policy score was associated with a 9% lower odds of binge drinking (aOR = 0.91, 95% CI 0.89, 0.92; N = 1,992,086), a result consistent for men, women and for most age and race subgroups. We find that gender gaps in binge drinking behaviors narrowed in states with higher state alcohol policy scores. These results were nearly identical to those found in other studies using different scores obtained with the aid of expert opinions. We conclude that the score developed here is a valid measure that can be readily updated for monitoring and evaluating the variation and impact of state alcohol policies and make available our state scores for the years of the study.Toward a Framework for Global Public Health Action Against Trafficking in Women and Girls
AbstractLe, P. T. D., Ryan, N. E., Bae, J. Y., & Colburn, K. D. (n.d.).Publication year
2017Journal title
World Medical and Health PolicyVolume
9Issue
3Page(s)
341-357AbstractTrafficking in women and girls is a serious human rights violation that has deleterious consequences for many individuals and communities worldwide. Although numerous anti-trafficking programs and policies have been implemented, the majority have adopted a law enforcement approach that has yielded little progress. In this article, we draw on the public health lens to discuss a set of principles that aim to guide anti-trafficking interventions toward a more comprehensive framework of action to address trafficking in women and girls. Given the complex causes and consequences associated with the issue, anti-trafficking interventions must address a range of factors, from the social determinants enabling the gender discriminatory norms and conditions that facilitate the problem, to the diverse health needs of individuals throughout the trafficking process. Additionally, anti-trafficking policies and programs should be implemented with the best available evidence and in partnership with relevant stakeholders, including the survivors themselves, while incorporating the unique opportunities and challenges of the different trafficking contexts.Retailer compliance with tobacco control laws in New York city before and after raising the minimum legal purchase age to 21
AbstractSilver, D., Macinko, J., Giorgio, M., Bae, J. Y., & Jimenez, G. (n.d.).Publication year
2016Journal title
Tobacco controlVolume
25Issue
6Page(s)
624-627AbstractObjectives: New York City (NYC) is the first large city to increase the legal minimum age for possessing tobacco products from 18 to 21 (Tobacco 21) and establish a minimum price law to reduce smoking rates among youth. However, retailer compliance with these regulations is unknown. Methods: Youthful investigators purchased cigarettes pre and post-Tobacco 21 implementation in 92 NYC neighbourhoods. Investigators recorded whether their ID was checked, the pack’s purchase price, and observed compliance with additional regulations. Multivariable OLS and Poisson regression models assess pre and post Tobacco 21 compliance with ID checks and purchase prices, controlling for retailer type, location and compliance with other laws. Results: Retailer compliance with ID checks declined from 71% to 62% (p<0.004) between periods, and holding constant other factors, compliance with ID checks and sales at legal prices declined significantly after the laws changed. Compared to chain stores, independent retailers had significantly lower compliance rates (p<0.01). Conclusions: Several aspects of tobacco control appear to have deteriorated in NYC. Greater attention to monitoring retailer compliance with all tobacco regulations will be important for Tobacco 21 laws to be effective in reducing youth access to tobacco products.Understanding policy diffusion in the U.S.: An information-theoretical approach to unveil connectivity structures in slowly evolving complex systems
AbstractAnderson, R. P., Jimenez, G., Bae, J. Y., Silver, D., Macinko, J., & Porfiri, M. (n.d.).Publication year
2016Journal title
SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical SystemsVolume
15Issue
3Page(s)
1384-1409AbstractDetecting and explaining the relationships among interacting components has long been a focal point of dynamical systems research. In this paper, we extend these types of data-driven analyses to the realm of public policy, whereby individual legislative entities interact to produce changes in their legal and political environments. We focus on the U.S. public health policy landscape, whose complexity determines our capacity as a society to effectively tackle pressing health issues. It has long been thought that some U.S. states innovate and enact new policies, while others mimic successful or competing states. However, the extent to which states learn from others, and the state characteristics that lead two states to influence one another, are not fully understood. Here, we propose a model-free, information-theoretical method to measure the existence and direction of influence of one state's policy or legal activity on others. Specifically, we tailor a popular notion of causality to handle the slow time scale of policy adoption dynamics and unravel relationships among states from their recent law enactment histories. The method is validated using surrogate data generated from a new stochastic model of policy activity. Through the analysis of real data in alcohol, driving safety, and impaired driving policy, we provide evidence for the role of geography, political ideology, risk factors, and demographic and economic indicators on a state's tendency to learn from others when shaping its approach to public health regulation. Our method offers a new model-free approach to uncover interactions and establish cause and effect in slowly evolving complex dynamical systems.