Dr. Christabel K. Cheung is an Associate Professor with tenure at the University of Maryland School of Social Work and a member of the University of Maryland Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center. She earned her PhD in Social Welfare from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Luskin School of Public Affairs, following a Master of Social Welfare in Gerontology from the University of California, Berkeley School of Social Welfare and a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism.

Dr. Cheung is a social and behavioral scientist whose scholarship examines how cancer and other serious illnesses shape health, functioning, and well-being across the life course. At the intersection of psychosocial oncology and life course gerontology, her work focuses particularly on adolescent and young adult (AYA) and early-onset cancer survivorship, with an emphasis on psychosocial care, health equity, aging, disability, and the long-term consequences of treatment, particularly financial hardship. Drawing from psychosocial oncology, gerontology, palliative care, and social welfare perspectives, she studies how health care and social systems can mitigate, or inadvertently amplify, the burdens associated with serious illness.

Dr. Cheung has advanced patient-centered approaches to knowledge generation through the development of Embodied Research Methods, a qualitative and mixed-methods approach designed to systematically incorporate lived experience and embodied knowledge into the behavioral and health sciences. Her current work focuses on improving psychosocial referral pathways, reducing financial and administrative toxicity, and promoting equitable access to supportive care for cancer survivors.

She is actively engaged with numerous national and international collaborations and currently serves as a scientific advisory board member for the STRONG AYA Core Outcomes Set Study at The Netherlands Cancer Institute. She has also served as teaching faculty for National Cancer Institute-funded training programs and as the AYA patient research advocate for the SWOG Cancer Research Network. Her affiliations include AYA CARES at Michigan Medicine, the University of Hawaii Cancer Center, the Southern California Cancer Surveillance Program, the Asian American Research Center on Health (ARCH), and the Emancipatory Sciences Lab at the University of California, San Francisco Institute for Health & Aging.

Prior to her academic career, Dr. Cheung spent eight years working in aging and health services, leading and evaluating community-based programs designed to support older adults and their caregivers. In her final practice role, she served as Executive Director of San Francisco Village, a nonprofit organization within the national Village Movement supporting aging in place. These experiences continue to inform her research, teaching, and commitment to translating scholarship into real-world settings.

Dr. Cheung’s work has been recognized with the Camara Jones Faculty Award for scholarship advancing health promotion and equity, as well as awards for excellence in teaching and community-engaged education. She is a fellow of Salzburg Global’s Transforming Information Pathways for Health, Well-Being, and Equity initiative, a member of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Hub for health sciences infrastructure development, and an inducted member of Sigma Xi, the international scientific honor society.

As a two-time AYA cancer survivor and bone marrow transplant recipient, Dr. Cheung brings both scientific and embodied expertise to her work. These experiences have deepened her commitment to ensuring that cancer care and survivorship research remain responsive to the needs, values, and priorities of patients and their communities. Her scholarship is guided by a belief that psychosocial care is an essential component of health and that all people affected by cancer deserve equitable access to the resources and support needed to live well beyond diagnosis.