Jeffrey Sonis
        Assistant Professor

     Dr. Sonis’s research focuses on the psychosocial consequences of human rights violations and epidemiologic research methods. In the past 6 years, he has been the Principal Investigator of four funded projects in that area: 1) a cross-sectional study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, of the psychological effects of torture and related trauma among Bosnian refugees seen in primary care settings in Detroit; 2) a cross-sectional study, funded by the Templeton Foundation, of the psychosocial effects on victims of human rights violations in South Africa of testifying before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission; 3) a 27-year retrospective cohort study, funded by the Office of Naval Research, of perceptions of benefit from trauma among Vietnam-era prisoners of war; 4) a population-based telephone survey, funded by the Andrus Family Fund, of community attitudes regarding the first “truth commission” in the United States, in Greensboro, North Carolina. He is also serving as a consultant to the largest study of evacuees from the World Trade Center attacks of September 11. In all of his work, he focuses on outcomes, such as perceptions of justice, that go beyond traditional mental health conceptions of the sequelae of trauma.

Dr. Sonis is also Co-Program Chair of the Conference on Innovations in Trauma Research Methods (www.citrm.org), funded annually for the next five years by the National Insitute of Mental Health, and the National Center for PTSD.

Dr. Sonis also maintains an active clinical practice in the Department of Family Medicine, where he sees patients of all ages, but no longer delivers babies.

Curriculum Vitae

You may contact Dr. Sonis by email: jsonis@med.unc.edu by phone at: (919) 843-6881; or by post at: CB #7240, Department of Social Medicine / University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill / Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7240.

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