DEI Research

Our faculty and staff research diversity experience in healthcare. Currently, Ms. Julianne Cyr, Research Instruct, and Ms. Emily F. Hutchens, Graduate Research Assistant, are researching the experiences of minority healthcare providers and patients.

Recently, Emily presented a poster titled “Tension, Trust, & Treatment: Characterizing the Experiences of Black EMS Providers in the Summer of 2020” at the UNC Minority Health Conference, based on a project that sought to explore and characterize the experiences of Black and African American EMS providers throughout the United States at the intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic and national conversation on racial inequality in the U.S. Additionally, Emily received a Summer Research Grant from the UNC Center for the Study of the American South to expand her previous work for Summer 2021. This new project will involve qualitative interviews with Black EMS providers throughout the Southern US and seeks to explore the problem of low recruitment and retention of Black providers.

Julianne presented a poster titled “Queer Identity in the Workplace: The Lived Experience of LGBTQ+ EMS Clinicians” at the National LGBTQ Health Conference in May 2021. This project focused on the experiences of LGBTQ+ identified EMS clinicians across the U.S. and highlighted the interactions between these EMS clinicians and their colleagues, supervisors, and patients. Julianne has worked with high school and college students to bring to life the experience of working with these qualitative data, including a May 2021 presentation by a North Carolina School of Science and Math student, Ms. Emilee Liggins, titled “The Lived Experiences of Transgender Identified EMS Providers within First Responder Culture” for her senior project.

Additionally, Julianne is the Co-Investigator and Emily is the Graduate Research Assistant for a HRSA-funded project which brings pediatric education and skills to rural EMS agencies. As part of this project, Julianne and her team are developing an in-person Pediatric Emergency Care Coordinator (PECC) Summit to be held in July 2021. The PECC Summit will bring together 12 PECCs from across North Carolina for a day of in-person lectures, networking, and education through simulation and gamification. Data from this event will be used to create communication tools EMS and their diverse patient populations. These tools will be developed by a Master of Public Health Capstone Team from UNC Gillings School of Public Health during school year 2021-2022.