Meet the Fellows and Faculty
Our fellows are chosen from a diverse pool of highly trained scientists with the purpose of developing them to pursue academic careers that emphasize research.
Predoctoral Fellows
Hannah Friedman (Health Policy and Management)
Hannah Friedman is a PhD student in the department of Health Policy and Management at the Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her research interests are primarily focused on mixed-methods research and improving health care quality, access, and equity, particularly in rural areas. At UNC, she has worked at the FORHP-funded Rural Health Research Center at the Sheps Center where she has contributed to projects on patterns of rural hospital closures as well as hospital access in rural areas. She has also worked on projects related to rural cancer caregivers and barriers to care, and to a study evaluating the needs of primary care practices during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to her graduate work at UNC, she worked as an analyst at RTI International where her primary role was assisting with the development of health care quality measures for CMS in post-acute care and hospice settings.
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 4th 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.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Suur Ayangeakaa, PhD, MPH (Health Behavior)
Dr. Suur Debrah Ayangeakaa, PhD, MPH is a behavioral scientist and HIV/AIDS disparities investigator. She is interested in community- and clinic-based approaches to increasing equitable access to and uptake of innovative HIV prevention and treatment interventions among underserved minority populations in the U.S. and in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her dissertation focused on understanding multi-level influences on HIV Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) service delivery and uptake among African Americans. As an AHRQ postdoctoral fellow, Suur’s research utilizes mixed-method approaches to developing and implementing interventions that foster the improvement of awareness and access to HIV PrEP and other innovative HIV prevention initiatives among African Americans, particularly cis-gender women (a group highly vulnerable to HIV in the U.S., but largely overlooked in intervention research). Suur obtained her PhD in Public Health Sciences with a concentration in Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences from the University of Louisville, Kentucky.
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.
Joannie Ivory, MD, MSPH (Hematology/Oncology)
Dr. Joannie Ivory, MD is currently a third-year Hematology/Oncology Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. For undergraduate education, she attended Xavier University of Louisiana and graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science. Subsequently, Dr. Ivory enrolled into Meharry Medical College, where she earned both her Master of Science in Public Health and Doctor of Medicine in an inaugural combined degree program. As part of the program’s curriculum, she studied factors that affect disparities seen in cancer mortality between different ethnic groups. Dr. Ivory went on to complete training in Internal Medicine at Saint Louis University Hospital, where she led research efforts to investigate provider adherence to NCCN-guidelines in breast cancer survivors. Her current research focuses on structural barriers to racial minority participation in breast cancer clinical trials.
Christopher Jensen, MD (Hematology/Oncology)
Dr. Christopher Jensen, MD, is a Hematology / Oncology clinical fellow, AHRQ health services research fellow, and master’s student in the Department of Epidemiology at UNC. He completed his medical degree at UNC, followed by Internal Medicine residency training at the University of Pennsylvania. His clinical interests center on hematologic malignancies and geriatric oncology, with a research focus on health outcomes and supportive care interventions for older cancer patients. His current research includes efforts to quantify the burden of care and time spent at home among older adults with acute leukemia, with attention to the impact of newer therapies on the burden of care. Other projects focus on the impact of geriatric impairments on therapy receipt and treatment outcomes among older adults with multiple myeloma. In addition to the AHRQ / Cecil G. Sheps Center fellowship, his research program is supported by the American Society of Clinical Oncology / Conquer Cancer Foundation Endowed Young Investigator Award in Geriatric Oncology in Honor of Dr. Arti Hurria and the UNC Cancer Information & Population Health Resource (CIPHR) New Investigator Program.
Faculty
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, Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy
Senior Research Fellow Mental Health Services Research, 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.
Timothy S. Carey, MD, MPH
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 includes 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.
Betsy Sleath, PhD
George H. Cocolas Distinguished Professor and Chair, Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy, School of Pharmacy
Co-Director, NC TraCS Community Engagement Core
Director, Child and Adolescent Health Program, Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research
Dr. Sleath’s research focuses on provider-patient communication in the areas of asthma, ADHD, diabetes, and glaucoma, engaging children and parents more in medication discussions during pediatric visits and improving patient medication adherence and other health outcomes through interventions.
Til Stürmer, MD, MPH, PhD
Director, Center for Pharmacoepidemiology
Professor, 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.
Morris Weinberger, PhD
Department Chair and Vergil N. Slee Distinguished Professor of Healthcare Quality Management, Department of Health Policy and Management, Gillings School of Global Public Health
Dr. Weinberger is a health services researcher who develops and evaluates innovative strategies to improve the process and outcomes of care for patients with chronic diseases. Most of his research has been conducted with socioeconomically and/or medically vulnerable patients, including Veterans.
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