Dr. Holmes addresses US Senate Subcommittee on Rural Access to Care

  Dr. Mark Holmes, director of the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC-CH and the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program, testified before the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on Health Care on May 17th, 2023. The hearing was titled “Improving Health Care Access in Rural Communities: Obstacles and Opportunities”.   Dr…. Read more »

Brittany Raffa’s JAMA publication on the increased ingestion of illicit substances by children during the pandemic featured in CNN article

Congratulations to NRSA Primary Care Research Fellow Dr. Brittany Raffa and team on their recent JAMA publication on the increased ingestion of illicit substances by children during the pandemic.  This was picked up by CNN and Dr. Raffa is quoted in that story. Read the full article here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2804094 Read the CNN news story here:… Read more »

CEAL@UNC is established and will be led by Dr. Sheryl Zimmerman

Dr. Sheryl Zimmerman, co-director of the Sheps Center’s Program on Aging, Disability, and Long-Term Care, is named Executive Director of the newly established CEAL@UNC at a reception to celebration the center in February at the Carolina Inn.  CEAL@UNC will now be housed in UNC’s School of Social Work with support from the Cecil G. Sheps… Read more »

Bianca Allison featured on recent webinar hosted by PolicyLab

Assistant professor of General Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Bianca Allison, MD, MPH, was part of a virtual conversation hosted by PolicyLab at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia on November 17, 2022.  The discussion was titled “Centering Youth in Supporting Access to Comprehensive Reproductive and Sexual Health Services”.  Dr. Allison was joined by two other pediatric experts… Read more »

New Research Provides County-Level ACA Eligibility Data, Highlights Enrollment Gaps

Rural Areas Continue to Face Lower ACA Enrollment Rates than Urban North Carolina A first-of-its-kind dashboard released this month spotlights county-level Affordable Care Act (ACA) eligibility and enrollment estimates along with outreach and enrollment event locations across North Carolina. The Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at UNC-Chapel Hill created the tool to… Read more »

Halladay, Cummings Lead a multi-site PCORI Study to Improve Blood Pressure Control testing the effectiveness of using a technology enhanced and interprofessional model of care

Jacqueline Halladay, MD, MPH, from UNC Family Medicine, and Doyle “Skip” Cummings, PharmD, FCP, FCCP, from ECU Brody School of Medicine, and are leading a five-year, $5.6 million dollar Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) grant where the team aims to understand if a technology enabled team based approach results in greater blood pressure control compared… Read more »

Routine car seat screening is not associated with reduced health care utilization

Primary Care Research Fellowship alum Dr. Wade Harrison recently published a paper looking at the association between routine car seat screening for preterm infants and subsequent health care utilization.  Their study found that while the screenings were not associated with health care utilization, they did see that failed screenings led to significantly longer birth hospitalization… Read more »

Sheps Center awarded two federal funding agreements for workforce research

Health workforce center

The Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research and Policy has been awarded two Health Resources and Services Administration agreements to fund research centers. The creation of the Behavioral Health Workforce Research Center will be funded by a five-year $4.5 million award and led by director Brianna Lombardi and deputy director Lisa de Saxe Zerden. The center… Read more »

Zimmerman Earns GSA’s 2022 Robert W. Kleemeier Award

  Congratulation Dr. Zimmerman!   The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) — the nation’s largest interdisciplinary organization devoted to the field of aging — has chosen Sheryl Zimmerman, PhD, FGSA, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as the 2022 recipient of the Robert W. Kleemeier Award. This distinguished honor is given annually… Read more »

Psych Services article is subject of Psychiatric New Alert

A new Psych Services article, Rapid and Deferred Help Seeking Among African American Parents of Children With Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties, led by Jennifer Richmond, recent Gillings grad, with co-authors Leslie Adams, recent Gillings grad and Sheps fellow, and Kathleen Thomas, School of Pharmacy, is the subject of a Psychiatric News Alert, which is distributed… Read more »

Donahue Awarded NIH Grant to Study Diabetes Self-Management Education and Support

Katrina Donahue, MD, MPH, and Laura Young, MD, PhD, received a grant from the National Institute of Health to increase uptake of diabetes self-management education. Jacquie Halladay, MD, MPH, will serve as a co-investigator on the project. The study will focus on two factors: provider and diabetes care and education specialist engagement with patients, and patient… Read more »

UNC researchers, the national Family-Run Executive Director Leadership Association and UTA awarded a grant from PCORI to identify outcomes that matter to youth and families using behavioral health services

Kathleen C Thomas, PhD, MPH of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy will serve as co-investigator in a study to identify youth and family priorities for outcomes used in CER research on behavioral health services. A $100K Eugene Washington award from PCORI, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute will allow researchers from the UNC Chapel Hill… Read more »