Dr. Dong was the recipient of the Paul Beeson Award by the National Institute on Aging; the first geriatrician to receive the National Physician Advocacy Merit Award by the Institute for Medicine as a Profession; the Nobuo Maeda International Aging and Public Health Research Award and the National Award for Excellence by the American Public Health Association; the Maxwell Pollack Award in Productive Aging, the Joseph Freeman Award, and the Powell Lawton Award by the Gerontological Society of America; the Rosalie Wolf Award by the National Committee on the Prevention of Elder Abuse; and the Outstanding Scientific Achievement for Clinical Investigation Award by the American Geriatric Society. In 2017, Dr. Dong was awarded the Ewald Busse Award by the International Congress of Gerontology and Geriatrics. In 2018, he received the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Equity Award. In 2021, Dr. Dong was awarded Scientific Achievement Award, by the Chinese American Medical Society

Dr. Dong served as a senior advisor for the Department of Health and Human Services under the Obama administration and as a Commissioner for American Bar Association. As an APSA Congressional Policy Fellow, his policy and advocacy work with the Department of Justice and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have also shaped the national agenda on the surveillance and preventive strategies combating issues of violence.

In 2011, Dr. Dong was appointed as a member of the Institute of Medicine: Global Violence Prevention Forum. Subsequently, he chaired the institute’s workshop on elder abuse prevention. In 2017, Dr. Dong was invited to be the planning committee member for the Board on Global Health to chart the future of violence prevention efforts at the National Academy of Medicine. In 2018, Dr. Dong became a member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) consensus panel: Care Interventions for Individuals with Dementia and their Caregivers. In 2018, Dr. Dong was elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation. In 2020, Dong became a member of the NAM consensus panel: Improving Diversity of Women and Underrepresented Minorities in Clinical Trial and Research.

An immigrant to the United States, Dr. Dong grew up in a rural village near Nanjing, China. He received his bachelor’s degree in biology and economics from the University of Chicago, his medical degree at Rush University College of Medicine, and a masters in public health in epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He completed his internal medicine residency and geriatric fellowship at Yale University Medical Center.