Lauren Caton (Maternal and Child Health)

Lauren is a PhD candidate in the Department of Maternal and Child Health (MCH). Her research focuses on state-level political dynamics and implementation of maternal behavioral health policies. Before returning to school she led the women’s portfolio for a research-advocacy organization in Washington, DC. Prior, she worked at Stanford University’s Center for Behavioral Health Sciences and Implementation Research (CBHSIR) evaluating California’s medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD) expansion projects and on reproductive justice projects at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and University of California, Berkeley’s Sexual Health and Reproductive Equity (SHARE) group. She holds a BS in Nutritional Sciences & Toxicology from the University of Texas at Austin and a MPH in Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health from the University of California, Berkeley.

Amanda Collins (Epidemiology)

Amanda is a PhD student in the department of Epidemiology at the UNC Chapel Hill Gillings School of Public Health. Her primary research interests are focused on improving mental health and access to health services among people with disabilities. She is especially interested in expanding access to mental and occupational health services for people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), conducting social epidemiological research that focuses on people with autism as a marginalized group, rather than autism as an adverse health outcome, and keeping the interests of the autistic community at the forefront of ASD-related research. Her dissertation research centers around better understanding predictors of poor mental health and barriers to health care access among adults with ASD. Prior to her graduate work at UNC, Amanda earned an MSPH in Epidemiology and a BS in Public Health at the University of South Carolina, and she worked as a biostatistician for Prisma Health Heart Hospital.

Andrea Goodwin, MA, MS (Sociology)

Andrea “Andi” Goodwin is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Andi works to identify the association between social stratification and health disparities across the life course. More specifically, she is interested in the relationship between race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender and caregiving in the US context. Her dissertation research focuses on the physiological and mental health of mid-life US women who serve as informal caregivers to elderly adults, possibly while simultaneously caring for dependent children, and the mitigating effects of health services and social support.  Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, she earned a Master of Arts in Sociology at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2020 and Morgan State University in 2011, as well as a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Exercise and Sport Sciences from the University of Florida in 2001 and 2003, respectively.

Phillip Hughes, MS (Pharmacy)

Phillip Hughes, MS, is a PhD student in the Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. His research interests center around mental health services and substance use treatment with a focus on improving access to care through policy. In particular, his current research examines how scope-of-practice issues, such as prescriptive authority, impact the availability and quality of treatment services. Secondary lines of research include outcomes of state-level opioid policies and how the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (a risk factor for mental health and substance use disorders) have changed over time. To date, he has worked on projects covering a breadth of topics, including studies on opioid policies, insurance networks, adverse childhood experiences, and psychotropic polypharmacy. These projects focus on a wide range of populations, such as people with disabilities, lgbtq+ individuals, and children with special healthcare needs. His overarching goal is to improve access to quality, equitable mental health care and substance use treatment services.

Chase Latour (Epidemiology)

Chase Latour is a 4^th year doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology at UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her broad goals as a researcher are to provide evidence on medication safety and efficacy among patients typically excluded from clinical trials while investigating methodologic issues that complicate these study questions. Her dissertation is focused on pharmacologic treatment of chronic hypertension in pregnancy and exploring how to better investigate these questions in electronic health record data.

Mustafa Abid, MD (General Surgery)

Mustafa is a 4^th year General Surgery resident at UNC.  Following Davidson College for his undergraduate degree, Mustafa attended Wake Forest School of Medicine for his medical degree before coming to UNC for his General Surgery residency. His clinical interests focus on Acute Care Surgery, which encompasses the care of Emergency General Surgery, Trauma, and Surgical and Trauma Critical Care patients. He is especially interested in Acute Care Surgery care environment in rural settings, including how and where patients from rural communities seek care for urgent and emergent surgical diseases and traumatic injury. Through the support of the AHRQ and Cecil G. Sheps Center fellowship, Mustafa will be studying General Surgery workforce density in rural settings, including how to determine a ‘functional’ workforce density, and how functional surgical workforce density impacts access and outcomes for patients presenting with common but potentially urgent surgical diseases. He will also be pursuing his MPH at UNC during this time.

Callie Berkowitz, MD (Hematology/Oncology)

Dr. Callie Berkowitz, MD is a second-year hematology/oncology fellow and health services researcher at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She received her undergraduate degree in mathematics from Duke University and worked as a business analyst for a technology company prior to returning to Duke for medical school and internal medicine residency training. As a Duke Institute for Health Innovation Clinical Research & Innovation Scholar, she examined the role of mobile applications in care delivery and barriers to care in cancer survivors. She went on to participate in the Duke Learning Health System Training Program, studying provider practices in advance care planning. Her research interests include patient-centered outcomes, point of care clinical assessment, and real-world data. She is currently working with the UNC Hemophilia and Thrombosis Center to study outcomes in patients with bleeding disorders.

Caitlin Hildebrand, MD, MPH (Nutrition)

Caitlin Hildebrand, MD, MPH, is completing a PhD in nutrition at Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her dissertation, “Exploring strategies to better equip primary care physicians (PCPs) to provide nutrition care,” takes a design thinking approach to understand PCPs’ opinions on desired approaches to enhance nutrition training of physicians and nutrition care in their current practice. She will pilot-test a brief dietary screening and counseling tool developed by UNC researchers. Her primary career goal is to improve the quality of nutrition care patients receive in the primary care setting through research directed at improving nutrition training of the physician workforce and testing innovative delivery methods of nutrition health services. Prior to her doctoral studies, she completed her MD and MPH degrees at Emory University. Her MPH training was in Behavioral Sciences and Health Education. Since joining Dr. Alice Ammerman’s research team at the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at UNC, she has collaborated on projects addressing food access and food insecurity and efforts to address medical student nutrition training at UNC School of Medicine.

Joshua Rivenbark, MD (Hematology/Oncology)

Dr. Joshua Rivenbark, MD, PhD, is a second-year Hematology fellow and population health researcher at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He received his MD and PhD in Public Policy from Duke University, for his dissertation entitled “How Social Status Permeates Inequalities in Health: Three Studies on Experiences of Social Disadvantage.” He completed his Internal Medicine residency training at University of Pennsylvania, before returning the the Triangle to join the fellowship program in Hematology. He is interested in how social inequities relate to inequities in health, and how public policies and healthcare institutions can reduce those inequities – with a particular focus on sickle cell disease.

Mark Holmes, PhD

Director, Training Program
Director, Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research
Director, NC Rural Health Research and Policy Analysis Center
Professor, Health Policy and Management, Gillings School of Global Public Health

Dr. Holmes’ interests include hospital finance, rural health, workforce, health policy, and patient-centered outcomes research.

Kathleen Thomas, PhD

Associate Director, Training Program
Associate Professor & Vice Chair of Research and Graduate Studies, Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy
Senior Research Fellow, Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research

Dr. Thomas’ research seeks to enrich the knowledge base for ways to improve access to care for underserved populations with mental health needs, ranging from minority populations to disability policy and childhood autism. She is deeply engaged in understanding how people live – what motivates them to be transactional around the most important things in their lives – family, health, well-being.

Ronny Bell, PhD, MS

Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor and Chair, Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy
Senior Advisor, UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center

Dr. Bell’s research focuses on health disparities in cancer as well as a concentration in chronic disease disparities with an emphasis on rural and underserved populations. As an enrolled member of the Lumbee tribe of eastern North Carolina, and Chair of the North Carolina American Indian Health Board, he is particularly interested in factors that contribute to health disparities in American Indian populations..

Tim Carey, MD, MPH

Research Professor, Division of General Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology, UNC School of Medicine
Former Director, Sheps Center and NRSA Training Program

Dr. Carey is a health services searcher and clinician whose research interests include epidemiology and utilization patterns in chronic back and neck pain, determinants of work disability, end-of-life issues including utilization of gastric feeding tubes, and health disparities in chronic pain treatment.

Katrina Donahue, MD, MPH

Professor and Vice Chair of Research, Department of Family Medicine
Co-Director, North Carolina Network Consortium
Director, HRSA T32 Primary Care Research Fellowship

Dr. Donahue has a strong interest in primary care practice redesign, chronic disease care and prevention, health behavior change and collaborations among public health and primary care.

Larissa Jennings Mayo-Wilson, PhD, MHS

Associate Professor, Department of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health
Associate Professor, Department of Maternal and Child Health, Gillings School of Global Public Health

Dr. Jennings Mayo-Wilson is a sexual and reproductive health behavioral scientist with methodological skills in epidemiology, biostatistics, and qualitative science.

Til Stürmer, MD, MPH, PhD

Nancy A Dreyer Distinguished Professor and Chair, Department of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health

Dr. Stürmer is an internist and epidemiologist with expertise in state-of-the-art methods for nonexperimental treatment comparisons, including comparative effectiveness research, and real-world evidence based on real-world data.

Justin Trogdon, PhD

Professor and PhD Program Director, Department of Health Policy and Management, Gillings School of Global Public Health

Dr. Trogdon is a health economist whose current research focuses on assessing the economic burden of cancer, evaluating the cost and cost-effectiveness of policies and interventions, and developing methods to identify causal effects of policies and interventions and simulate new policies.