| Dr. Giselle Corbie-Smith is an Associate Professor of Social Medicine and Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed medical school at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and trained as an Internal Medicine Intern, Resident and Chief Resident at Yale University School of Medicine. She received a Masters of Science in Clinical Research from the Epidemiology Department at Emory University. Her interest in minority health issues, especially access to care and the influence of culture, race, ethnicity, and social class on health, dates from early in her academic career. Her clinical work has always focused on serving underserved populations in public hospitals or clinics.
Since joining the faculty at UNC in 2000, she has continued her research on the appropriate engagement of communities of color in research with funding from the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities, the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Institute of Nursing Research, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Among other projects, she is the Principal Investigator of Project GRACE, a community-based participatory research partnership in Eastern North Carolina. She is the Director of the Minority Recruitment Core of the Carolina-Shaw Partnership for the Elimination of Health Disparities (Project Connect). The Core’s main goal is to build community-academic relationships to increase minority participation in research. As Principal Investigator of the LeARN Study, Dr. Corbie-Smith examined research participants’ attitudes about participating in genetic research across the state of North Carolina. As Principal Investigator on the Project EAST study, she is focusing on characterizing individual and community influences on research participation in rural African Americans and Latinos to develop innovative, theory based, culturally responsive interventions. Other past and present studies include defining the barriers and facilitators to African American elders use of influenza vaccines; research on HIV risk among older African American women; and studying the impact of training in cultural competency on knowledge and skills among medical students and residents.
Dr. Corbie-Smith is the Co-Director of the Program on Health Disparities at the UNC Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. The purpose of this program is to coordinate and enhance disparity research within the Sheps Center and throughout UNC, to build expertise in working with minority communities, and to improve collaboration and communication with minority serving institutions in North Carolina and the nation. Dr. Corbie-Smith is nationally recognized for her scholarly work on the practical and ethical issues of involvement of communities in research and has served on numerous local, regional and national committees. She is serving on an Institute of Medicine committee reviewing standards of systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness research, served on an IOM committee examining ethical issues in housing hazard research and has served as a member of the National Children’s Study Federal Advisory Committee. She has been honored for her research accomplishments with the Leadership in Health Disparities Research award from the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities and at UNC with the James E. Bryan Award for Public Service and the Jefferson Pilot Fellowship in Academic Medicine.
Dr. Corbie-Smith is also the Director of the Community Engagement Core (CEC) of the NC Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute (NC TraCS). The CEC engages communities, faculty, and health care providers as partners in clinical and translational research and ultimately transforms the way that academic investigators and community members work together while boosting public trust in research. Under the direction of Dr. Corbie-Smith, the CEC will leverage UNC-CH’s extensive experience serving North Carolina communities and multiple existing community-based research efforts to create a unique program with interdisciplinary leadership. The CEC focus priorities include: Connection Initiative, Tailored Educational Offerings and Research Infrastructure in Community-Based Research.
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