PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCE
Investigating Health Disparities
HONG XIAO
Title: Associate Professor of Economics and Social &
Administrative Pharmacy, College of Pharmacy, Florida A&M University
Education: Ph.D., Pharmaceutical Socioeconomics,
University of Iowa; B.S., Pharmacy, Beijing University
(formerly Beijing Medical University)
Age: 39
Although many scientists have a passion for research because they enjoy working in a laboratory, Dr. Hong Xiao chose her field because she wanted to interact with patients. That’s how Xiao, a native of China, found herself in the American heartland, studying pharmacy administration with Drs. Henri R. Manasse Jr. and Bernard Sorofman.
“The United States has a very developed system of graduate studies, so I came to the states for my Ph.D.,” she says. “First I went to the University of Illinois in Chicago, but my advisor [Manasse] moved a year later, so I followed him to the University of Iowa.”
Sorofman, Xiao’s co-advisor for her dissertation, still admires the work she did as a student studying the effects of pharmacy closures in rural Iowa. Manasse says she “undertook her research work with inquisitiveness and vigor. She has maintained all of these qualities as a faculty member and researcher in her discipline. She makes us all very proud to have been affiliated with her.”
