Fellowship Program Overview
NRSA Primary Care Research Fellowship
Donald E. Pathman, MD, MPH, Director
Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Fellowship Overview
The fellowship‘s goal is to train primary care physicians for academic careers with an emphasis on research. The two-to three-year fellowship provides participants with the knowledge, skills and experience to pursue an individual research program. Fellows establish a research foundation through course work in the various departments of UNC’s School of Public Health and seminars in the School of Medicine’s NIH-supported K-30 Program, and reinforced through fellows’ research projects, weekly works-in-progress seminars, and mentoring by clinical and research faculty.
Fellows enter the program directly from residency training, community practice, or faculty positions. Over the program’s 20 years, it has graduated approximately 55 fellows. Graduates have gone on to establish excellent publication records and achieve success in obtaining research funding, including career development awards. The vast majority currently holds academic positions.
During the fellowship, participants complete three to five research projects, working closely with a variety of faculty from across UNC’s health sciences schools and other schools on campus. Mentoring plays a key role in fellows’ development.
Fellows’ research generally falls within one or more of the following areas of research excellence and opportunity on campus, working with the listed program faculty:
Minority Health and Health Care Disparities
Giselle Corbie-Smith gcorbie@med.unc.edu
Health and Literacy
Darren DeWalt
darren_dewalt@med.unc.edu
Diet, Obesity and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Reduction
Alice Ammerman alice_ammerman@unc.edu
Anthony Viera anthony_viera@med.unc.edu
Carmen Samuel-Hodge carmen_samuel@unc.edu
Quality Improvement and Patient Safety
Tim Carey carey@mail.schsr.unc.edu
Greg Randolph greg_randolph@med.unc.edu
End-of-Life Care, Palliative Care andGeriatrics
Laura Hanson laura_hanson@med.unc.edu
Phillip Sloane psloane@med.unc.edu
Timothy Daaleman tim_daaleman@med.unc.edu
Decision Sciences and Evidence-BasedMedicine
Michael Pignone pignone@mail.schsr.unc.edu
Daniel Jonas daniel_jonas@med.unc.edu
Access to Care and Rural Health
Donald Pathman don_pathman@unc.edu
Thomas Ricketts ricketts@schsr.unc.edu
The fellowship is based in the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, a large, multi-disciplinary research unit on campus.
The program is principally funded through an institutional “T32” National Research Service Award grant through the Health Resources and Services Administration. UNC’s primary care clinical departments and divisions provide additional funding.
