Improving the Impact of Mental Health Courts

The purpose of this three-year feasibility study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health is to adapt and pilot test dual diagnosis motivational interviewing for local mental health court participants who have co-occurring mental illness and substance use disorders.

North Carolina Probation/Parole Officer Workload Study

Funded by the North Carolina Department of Correction, a multidisciplinary team representing the fields of social work, criminology and sociology from the School of Social Work and the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) is conducting a mixed-methods study of probation/parole officer workload issues in North Carolina.

Qualitative Study of Assertive Community Treatment

This study is being done in response to a recommendation made in the feasibility study conducted at the Sheps Center last year to determine if sufficient data and agency cooperation existed for a full-scale evaluation of the 10 Assertive Care Treatment teams.

Transitions from Assertive Community Treatment to Less Intensive Services

This study will use both quantitative and qualitative research methods and administrative data from a large mental health provider in Cincinnati, Ohio, in order to examine and compare the experiences of 237 ACT consumers who were transitioned to less intensive services and 672 ACT consumers who were never transitioned to less intensive services.

Duration Limitations and Adherence to Chronic Medication

The researchers will use claims data to examine adherence, utilization, and cost of anti-hypertensives, anti-diabetic medications, lipid-lowering drugs, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, and seizure-disorder medications among individuals with chronic conditions.

Influences of the Diffusion of Psychotropic Medication

The study includes three research aims to characterize the diffusion of psychotropic medication across a range of insurance settings, both managed and non-managed care, nationally and in several local markets in an effort to understand the inhibitors and promoters of the adoption and diffusion rate of new pharmaceutical technologies in the mental health area.

Children with Asthma: Communication and Outcomes

This four-year project, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, is focused on a neglected area within children’s health services research, the relationship between provider-child-caregiver communication during pediatric asthma visits and treatment adherence.

Expansion of Research Capability to Study Comparative Effectiveness in Complex Patients

The purpose of the project is to create a data infrastructure for comparative effectiveness research by linking health care data bases relevant to the care of complex patients and conducting a small research study as proof of concept that the infrastructure created is accessible and can be used to address important questions in comparative effectiveness research.