Jennifer Ku, PhD, MPH

Dr. Ku is an infectious disease epidemiologist and postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Research & Evaluation. Her research includes vaccine safety and effectiveness projects on shingles and COVID-19 vaccines. She is also involved in other infectious diseases studies on influenza, SARS-CoV-2, and other respiratory viruses.

Before joining Kaiser Permanente in 2021, Dr. Ku worked in clinical and epidemiologic research in a variety of roles at Oregon Health & Science University. During her doctoral training, Dr. Ku also served in a leadership role on the Oregon Health Authority/School of Public Health COVID-19 Pandemic Response Team. Her previous research interests included pulmonary infection due to nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM), primarily focusing on treatment patterns and outcomes using large health care administrative data. As part of her doctoral dissertation research, Dr. Ku used U.S. Medicare data to understand prescribing patterns and tolerability outcomes of antibiotic therapy for NTM pulmonary disease.