The Department's research addresses a variety of specific issues within four general areas:

  • Medical Humanities;

  • Social Factors in Health and Illness;

  • Preventive Health Services; and

  • Medical Care and Health Policy.
     Members of the faculty exhibit diverse investigative work styles, ranging from solo efforts to large, multidisciplinary-team approaches. Much of this research is carried on in collaboration with the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, and colleagues in the clinical departments of the School of Medicine, other professional schools and departments on the Chapel Hill Campus, universities elsewhere in the United States and abroad, and state and federal health agencies.

     The following projects illustrate the faculty's recent research interests:

    Faculty working in the medical humanities are exploring such topics as the ethics and legality of physician-assisted death; the ordering of medical treatises in the English Renaissance; informed consent in gene transfer research; ethical and legal issues raised by the new reproductive technologies; the history and ethnography of the computed tomography suite; the history of genetic disease, including cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia; the ethics of managed care, and the history of the popular image of the American physician. Information about a current faculty project examining gene transfer research is available at http://www.med.unc.edu/soclmed/scob/

     Major research efforts in prevention include three studies of childhood immunization. These deal, respectively, with community demonstrations, physician behavior, and national policy directions. Other research addresses the role of volunteer helpers for expectant mothers; methods for improving the delivery of preventive services to low income populations; and policy for prevention of low birthweight and infant mortality.

     One of the questions under study in the social factors area is how self-care and other factors contribute to physicial and social independence among the non-institutionalized elderly. Other work addresses the influence of social factors such as interpersonal violence and receipt of disability income on the life and illness course of people with severe psychiatric disorders; family, community and subject risk factors for child abuse and neglect; social and ethical issues in craniofacial care; how families respond to the delivery of "bad news" by physicians; family violence across cultures; and black health in 20th century America.

     In the medical care and policy area, faculty are investigating the organizational and financial stability of small rural hospitals; geographical variation in the frequency of medical and surgical procedures; organization and financing of mental health and community support services for homeless persons, jail and prison inmates, people with serious mental illnesses, and other vulnerable populations; the detection and treatment of mental illness in primary health care settings; implications of changes in Medicare and Medicaid policy for graduate medical education programs; health-services use in rural and urban China; the value of the National Health Service Corps; and the history of medical practice in the United States.

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