Dr. Quach’s primary research interest has focused on immigrant populations to examine environmental, occupational, and sociocultural factors that may influence their health. She has a strong commitment to community-based participatory research (CBPR), and has worked with various advocacy, environmental and community-based organizations to leverage public health goals that promote the health and well-being of underserved populations. In her current capacity as a research scientist at the Cancer Prevention Institute of California, she leads several studies focusing on the booming nail salon workforce, composed largely of Vietnamese immigrant women.

Her studies include examining cancer incidence in salon workforce members, conducting exposure assessments within salons and developing intervention studies aimed at encouraging salon workers and owners to collectively reduce their workplace exposures to harmful chemicals. In addition, she is leading a CBPR project of community mapping of environmental hazards (e.g., traffic density, Superfund sites and barriers to health care) in ethnic enclaves with a large density of Vietnamese Americans to examine whether these areas have disproportionate environmental hazards relative to other communities. The mapping of such environmental hazards and sociocultural barriers to health can inform research efforts examining how contextual-level factors can influence cancer incidence and other health outcomes.

In 2011, after years of community-research collaboration, Dr. Quach joined Asian Health Services as research department director to establish a research arm. She received her master's in public health from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her PhD in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health.