Category: Research

For physicians working in underserved areas, relationships with their communities are crucial in their decisions about whether to stay in their jobs or leave for work elsewhere. A new study finds that physicians who feel connected to their communities and whose communities meet their personal and family needs are more...

Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Department of Family Medicine, including Associate Professor Sarah D. Kowitt, PhD, MPH, Professor Leah Ranney, PhD, MA, Kristen L. Jarman, MSPH, and Sonia A. Clark, MHA, published a comprehensive content analysis of cannabis warnings in Preventive Medicine Reports. Co-authors included...

A new study co-authored by Sylvia Becker-Dreps, MD, MPH, Joan C. and Robert Huntley Professor of Family Medicine and Epidemiology and Director of the Office of Global Health Education, and Filemón Bucardo, PhD, a senior researcher at UNC-Chapel Hill, offers new insight into how a common intestinal parasite may affect...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Prostate cancer screening is one of the most common decisions men face in primary care, yet many patients make that choice without fully understanding the potential benefits and harms. A new editorial by UNC physician experts argues that shared decision-making should no longer depend on individual...

Brianna Lombardi, PhD, MSW, and Erin Fraher, PhD, MPP, served as lead investigators on a major new statewide report assessing the need, supply, and distribution of North Carolina’s mental health and substance use (MH/SU) services workforce. Released by the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, the report, State...

A new three‑year evaluation led by the UNC Chatham Hospital Maternity Care Center (MCC) team shows that reopening a rural Level I maternity unit can provide safe, high‑quality birth outcomes, significantly reduce travel burdens for families, and offer a strong family physician and midwife‑led model for rural maternity care. Patient...

Nadja Vielot, PhD, an epidemiologist in the UNC Department of Family Medicine, is lead author of a newly published study in Annals of Internal Medicine that provides real-world evidence for the effectiveness of the recombinant zoster vaccine (RZV) in older adults. The research team conducted a target trial emulation using...

A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill clinical trial found that graphic health warnings on little cigars and cigarillos significantly increase users’ intentions to quit and promote behaviors linked to tobacco cessation. These findings could provide the cigar-specific evidence the FDA previously lacked in efforts to require cigar warnings....

Dr. Ryan Paulus has been awarded a $75,000 American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) Residency Learning Network Grant to establish a national POCUS Research Collaborative focused on advancing point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) in family medicine. The collaborative aims to evaluate how POCUS can improve diagnostic accuracy, enhance clinical decision-making, and support...

A qualitative study published in BMC Public Health, conducted by lead author Chineme Enyioha, MD, MPH, and colleagues, aimed to design effective communication strategies to support health warning labels (HWLs) on little cigars and cigarillos (LCCs), a tobacco product increasingly popular among young adults, particularly within Black communities. With nearly 9...

Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Department of Family Medicine, including Professor Leah Ranney, PhD, MA, Assistant Professor Sarah D. Kowitt, PhD, MPH, and authors Sonia A. Clark, MHA, and Kristen L. Jarman, MSPH, have published a pivotal study in a special issue of the American...

UNC Family Medicine faculty Leah Ranney, PhD, Sarah Kowitt, PhD, MPH, and team were recently rewarded a five-year, $2.9 million grant studying cannabis warnings. The award from the NIH National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) will go towards research involving a legal analysis of existing cannabis warning regulations, interviews with...

Brianna Lombardi, Ph.D., MSW, and Family Medicine colleagues are recipients of a recently awarded $4.5 million five-year HRSA grant to form a new Behavioral Health Workforce Research Center (BHWRC) at UNC. Lombardi is the Primary Investigator and the Director of the BHWRC, which will function as a sister center to...

Adam Goldstein, MD, MPH, traveled to the White House on June 1 for the Cancer Moonshot Smoking Cessation Forum. The meeting highlighted the Biden Administration’s commitment to tackling the single biggest driver of cancer deaths in this country—smoking—and efforts underway across sectors to equitably expand access to effective smoking cessation...