Dr Pek Kei (Becky) Im
Senior Epidemiologist and Wellcome Career Development Fellow, Nuffield Department of Population Health; Research Fellow, Wolfson College
Dr Pek Kei (Becky) Im is a senior epidemiologist at the University of Oxford who studies how alcohol affects health. She leads a Wellcome-funded research programme on alcohol’s health effects in diverse populations, including in China and the UK, and works to translate research evidence to inform public health policy.
About
Dr Pek Kei (Becky) Im is a senior epidemiologist and Wellcome Career Development Fellow at Oxford Population Health. Her research investigates the health impacts of alcohol consumption using large population-based studies of diverse ancestries. She is also interested in the trends in alcohol consumption across populations, and the development of interventions and initiatives to reduce alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harms.
Dr Im has received competitive research grants from Wellcome and the Royal Society. In 2024, she was awarded a Wellcome Career Development Award to lead a multi-disciplinary research programme to understand the scope, mechanisms and burden of alcohol-related health impacts in diverse populations, bringing together international partners across academia, policymakers and NGOs to inform evidence-based and cost-effective public health policies.
Her 2023 study in Nature Medicine found that alcohol consumption increased the risks of more than 60 diseases in Chinese men, including many not previously linked to alcohol. A further 2023 study in The Lancet Public Health used genetic evidence to challenge long-standing claims that moderate drinking protects health. She has contributed to an evidence review informing the European Heart Network’s 2025 position paper on alcohol and cardiovascular health, and provided expertise on alcohol and cancer for the 2024 UK Parliament POSTnote 'Food, diet, nutrition and cancer'. She has received multiple international awards for alcohol research, and was Highly Commended in the Breakthrough Researcher category of the University of Oxford Vice-Chancellor’s Awards in 2025.
Dr Im also sits on the Oxford Policy Engagement Network Steering Group and chairs its Seed Fund panel. Internationally, she co-founded the International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcohol and Addictions Early-Career Investigator Association to support the professional development of alcohol and addiction researchers and international collaborations.
Expertise
- Alcohol and health
- Epidemiology
- Alcohol policy
- Alcohol consumption in China and Asia
Selected publications
- Hyperuricemia, gout and the associated comorbidities in China: findings from a prospective study of 0.5 million adults (2025)
- The U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Were Economical With the Truth About Alcohol and Health (2025)
- Alcohol consumption and risks of more than 200 diseases in Chinese men (2023)
- Alcohol intake and cause-specific mortality: conventional and genetic evidence in a prospective cohort study of 512,000 adults in China (2023)
- Alcohol metabolism genes and risks of site-specific cancers in Chinese adults: An 11-year prospective study (2022)
- Alcohol drinking and risks of liver cancer and non-neoplastic chronic liver diseases in China: a 10-year prospective study of 0.5 million adults (2021)
- Problem drinking, wellbeing and mortality risk in Chinese men: findings from the China Kadoorie Biobank (2019)
- Patterns and trends of alcohol consumption in rural and urban areas of China: findings from the China Kadoorie Biobank (2019)
Media experience
Dr Pek Kei Im has experience providing written comments and expert quotes to national and international media outlets. She also undertakes public engagement, including writing blogs for the Institute of Alcohol Studies and explaining complex research in accessible terms in videos produced by Oxford Population Health.
Recent media work
- Brits warned drinking ANY amount of alcohol 'puts you at risk of 60 diseases' (Mirror, 2023)
- Drinking alcohol weekly could be connected to 61 different diseases, study finds (Fox News, 2023)
- Problem drinkers in China: mostly men, usually poor, often stressed out, new study finds (South China Morning Post, 2020)
Languages
English, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese