Biography
Dr. Linh earned a medical degree at Hanoi Medical University, Vietnam in 2015. She completed the Master of Public Health program at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2017, fully funded by the Vietnam Education Foundation. She returned to Vietnam to work at Hanoi University of Public Health for two years in different international research projects. She then came back to the US to obtain three degrees from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: a PhD in Nutritional Epidemiology, a MSc in Epidemiology, and a MSc in Biostatistics.
Her research interests lie in the effect of modifiable lifestyle factors such as sustainable diet patterns and physical activity on the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases such as obesity, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases. She has published about 25 papers on peer-reviewed journals including the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Lancet Planetary Health, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the International Journal of Cancer. During her doctoral training in Nutritional Epidemiology, she developed a Planetary Health Diet Index (PHDI) to measure the adherence of lay people to the EAT-Lancet diet. This sustainable diet promotes both human health and minimizes the environmental impact on the planet’s health. She validated the PHDI using three largest prospective cohorts in the United States that have followed more than 200,000 health professionals over 34 years. The new diet score started a new branch of research in estimating the health and environmental effects of sustainable diet.
Besides disease-related work, Dr.Linh is very interested in medical education reform and nurturing the next generation of health researchers. During the past seven years as a Teaching Fellow at Hopkins and Harvard, she has been mentoring over 50 medical students and residents around the world to develop and publish research projects on peer-reviewed journals. She co-founded Research Advancement Consortium in Health (REACH), fully funded by the US Embassy in Hanoi in 2018, to provide online and offline medical research training courses, small grants, and mentorship for health improvement projects across Vietnam.
• Sustainable diet
• Nutritional epidemiology
• Chronic disease epidemiology
• Mental health
• Environmental impact
• Medical education
• Epidemiology
• Biostatistics
• Climate change, Nutrition, and Health
• Data analysis
1. Zhan J, Bui L, Hodge RA, et al. Planetary Health Diet Index Trends and Associations with Dietary Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Disease Biomarkers, Obesity, and Mortality in the United States (2005-2018). Am J Clin Nutr 2025; published online Jan 9. DOI:10.1016/j.ajcnut.2025.01.007.
2. Bui LP, Pham TT, Wang F, et al. Planetary Health Diet Index and risk of total and cause-specific mortality in three prospective cohorts. Am J Clin Nutr 2024; published online June 10. DOI:10.1016/j.ajcnut.2024.03.019.
3. 10 Gu X, Bui LP, Wang F, Wang DD, Springmann M, Willett WC. Global adherence to a healthy and sustainable diet and potential reduction in premature death. Proc Natl Acad Sci 2024; 121: e2319008121.
4. 11 Zhan JJ, Hodge RA, Dunlop AL, et al. Dietaryindex: A User-Friendly and Versatile R Package for Standardizing Dietary Pattern Analysis in Epidemiological and Clinical Studies. Am J Clin Nutr 2024; 0. DOI:10.1016/j.ajcnut.2024.08.021.
5. 12 Sawicki CM, Ramesh G, Bui L, et al. Planetary health diet and cardiovascular disease: results from three large prospective cohort studies in the USA. Lancet Planet Health 2024; 8: e666–74.
6. Pham T, Bui L (co-first), Giovannucci E, et al. Prevalence of obesity and abdominal obesity and their association with metabolic-related conditions in Vietnamese adults: an analysis of Vietnam STEPS survey 2009 and 2015. Lancet Reg Health – West Pac 2023; 39: 100859.
7. Ngo VDT, Bui LP (co-first), Hoang LB, et al. Associated factors with Premenstrual syndrome and Premenstrual dysphoric disorder among female medical students: A cross-sectional study. PLOS ONE 2023; 18: e0278702.
8. Huy LD, Tung PT, Nhu LNQ, et al. The willingness to perform first aid among high school students and associated factors in Hue, Vietnam. PLOS ONE 2022; 17: e0271567.
9. Phan HD, Nguyen TNP, Bui PL, et al. Overweight and obesity among Vietnamese school-aged children: National prevalence estimates based on the World Health Organization and International Obesity Task Force definition. PLOS ONE 2020; 15: e0240459.
10. Pham T, Bui L, Nguyen A, et al. The prevalence of depression and associated risk factors among medical students: An untold story in Vietnam. PLOS ONE 2019; 14: e0221432.
11. Pham T, Bui L, Kim G, Hoang D, Tran T, Hoang M. Cancers in Vietnam—Burden and Control Efforts: A Narrative Scoping Review: Cancer Control 2019; published online July 18. DOI:10.1177/1073274819863802.
12. Bui LP, Hill-Briggs F, Durkin N, et al. Does an all-condition case management program for high-risk patients reduce health care utilization in medicaid and medicare beneficiaries with diabetes? J Diabetes Complications 2019; 33: 445–50.
• 2015: Doctor of Medicine, Hanoi Medical University
• 2017: Master of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
• 2024: Doctor of Philosophy, Nutritional Epidemiology; Master of Science in Biostatistics; Master of Science in Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
· 2023: Finalist for the Graduate Student Research Award Competition, American Society for Nutrition
· 2023: 2nd prize at the Emerging Leaders in Nutrition Science Poster Competition on Climate, Food Systems, Diet, Nutrition, and Health, American Society for Nutrition
· 2018: 2nd prize in the Vietnam National Conference on Science and Technology for Young Medical Investigators, Vietnam
· 2016-2017: Vietnam Education Foundation Fellowship for the MPH program at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health ($54,000), USA
· 2016: Master of Public Health Scholarship ($11,800), Eskridge Family Fund Scholarship for Outstanding International Students ($16,200), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
