Dr. Muench is an Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Nursing, and affiliated faculty at the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies and Healthforce Center. As a nurse, nurse practitioner, and health services researcher, her program of research is centered on the nursing workforce. She has over a decade of experience conducting studies on the nursing labor market, examining prescribing patterns in primary care and the nursing home, and assessing the contributions of nurse practitioners across diverse settings and populations. Her research interests include populations living with opioid use disorder, serious mental illness, older adults with dementia, and those experiencing chronic pain.

She has expertise working with large Medicare administrative claims data, the electronic medical record, and numerous large survey data, including the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), Current Population Survey (CPS), American Community Survey (ACS), American Time Use Survey (ATUS), National Sample Survey or Registered Nurses (NSSRN) and many others. Her research has been published in leading health care journals, including JAMA, NEJM, and Health Affairs.

Dr. Muench trained as a registered nurse in the UK and completed her nurse practitioner training in Adult and Women’s health at Yale University. Her doctoral degree is also from Yale with a focus on health policy and health care systems. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Vanderbilt University before joining UCSF.