UNC Department of Family Medicine

Faculty / Areas of Interest
Projects on the Horizon / Koonce / Project: Analysis of residency quality improvement curriculum
Duties: Help design and distribute a survey, analyze results, and possibly contribute to an article
Good fit: Student(s) with interest in QI, proficiency with survey design and/or software programs, self-directed
Halpert / Project: Standardizing advanced care planning and goals of care discussions in the primary care setting. This project also focuses on standardized quality improvement work sowill provide a biggerpicture of how a clinic flows and how implementing a process affects clinic.
Duties: The student would be responsible for tracking charts, reaching out to patients with a script/phone call, following up clinic notes with a chart review.
Good fit: Self-motivated, feels comfortable working with clinic staff and following up independently with providers
Neutze / Project: Designing a series of activity books for kids to be used while they are waiting for their clinic visit
Duties: help with content and design of a pediatric activity book and collect data to see if this has an impact on patient satisfaction
Good fit: Self-motivated and creative
Sloane / Project: The Role of Nurse Midwives as Teachers
Duties: Literature review, electronic survey, interviews, data entry, data analysis, and paper preparation. You’ll also work with a team that includes the director of UNC family medicine’s maternal-child health service and an experienced researcher, so you’ll receive plenty of mentorship and have a chance to go on clinical rounds.
Good fit: Motivated and can work most of the summer
Asher / Dr. Asher’s research focuses on the use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine for chronic conditions such as hypertension and cancer, with a primary focus on the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of botanical agents. He has been involved in several acupuncture studies, as well as systematic reviews of acupuncture for pain and non-pharmacologic treatments for depression. He is currently leading clinical and translational trials of curcumin for prevention and treatment of colorectal cancer. He also works with the RTI-UNC Evidence-based Practice Center to conduct systematic reviews for AHRQ, USPSTF, and CMS.
Becker-Dreps / Dr. Becker-Dreps’ research focuses on childhood diarrhea and the evaluation of vaccine effectiveness. She is currently conducting studies in Nicaragua to understand why rotavirus vaccines have lower effectiveness in low-income settings.
Daaleman / Dr. Daaleman's areas of interest include care of medically vulnerable populations and chronic illness care; social and cultural influences on chronic illness and end- of-life care including religion and spirituality, and; aging and the life course.
Donahue / Dr. Donahue’s research interests include primary care practice redesign, diabetes, prevention and health services research. She has led several projects in the state involving numerous primary care practices. She serves as the co-director of the North Carolina Network Consortium (a practice-based research meta-network), and is an active member of the of the Community Academic Resources for Engaged Scholarship (CARES) Service for North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute [(the academic home of the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA)]. As part of CARES, Dr. Donahue engages communities, faculty, and health care providers as partners in clinical and translational research.
Fraher / Dr. Fraher's research focuses on understanding the flexible use of workers in new models of care, developing new methodologies to project how many health workers will need under different possible "futures," using quantitative and qualitative data to spark discussions about redesigning health workforce education systems to better align with population's health care needs, and using life course theory to better understand health professionals' career trajectories.
Goldstein / Dr. Goldstein conducts research on health policy related to tobacco regulatory science, patient-centered tobacco cessation, disparities in tobacco use, health communication and behavior change, and gun violence prevention.
Gourlay / Dr. Gourlay studies bone density loss and fracture prevention in older women and men to inform osteoporosis screening guidelines. She is currently conducting an R01-funded study of osteoporosis screening and fracture prevention in older men (project period 9/1/14 to 4/30/18).
Halladay / Dr. Halladay's research interests include working in ambulatory practices and health care systems with investigative and clinical teams who collectively aim to enhance care delivery and outcomes for patients with chronic conditions, specifically cardiovascular disease, asthma, and tobacco use. She has a particular interest in understanding the practice level costs of participating in various quality improvement and practice transformation activities. She is the Director of UNC’s Trial Innovation Network's Hub and works closely with the teams at UNC and beyond to create and use large clinical databases to support large, multi-site, and pragmatic clinical trials. She is also on faculty with the Preventive Medicine Residency Program at UNC and serves on the UNC Faculty Council.
Kistler / Dr. Kistler's area of interest is decision-making around the care of older adults, particularly the appropriateness of their care. Her research has focused primarily on preventive services such as cancer screening and tobacco cessation, and around infection control.
Pathman / Dr. Pathman’s work centers on research and evaluation of organization, state and federal programs and policies that affect the work and lives of physicians and other healthcare practitioners, and on how these, in turn, affect access and quality of patient care and clinicians’ careers. Specific areas of research have been in the effects on clinicians of organization personnel policies, clinical guideline dissemination, provider satisfaction under various employment configurations and work controls, rural health professional distribution, medical education, access to care, health disparities, and community medicine
Porterfield / Dr. Porterfield conducts public health systems research and public health program evaluations through RTI International. Her areas of interest are chronic disease public health practice, performance measurement in public health practice, and integration between health care and public health.
Ranney / Dr. Ranney has a strong interest in prevention and health promotion research to promote healthy lifestyles and prevent chronic disease. She is also interested in regulatory science research, in particular how regulating the manufacture, distribution and marketing of tobacco products can protect the public.
Shoenbill / Dr. Shoenbill’s primary research interests include secondary use of EHR data, natural language processing, and machine learning to inform and improve quality of care and patient outcomes.
Sloane / Dr. Sloane’s research interests include institutional and community-based long- term care, management of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, medical care of older persons, medical symptoms, and translational research.
Sonis / Dr. Sonis is interested in psychological trauma. Most of his work has focused on the psychosocial effects of conflict and war and treatment of PTSD. He is also interested in epidemiologic research methods used to study the effects of psychological trauma.
Zolotor / Dr. Zolotor's areas of interest include child abuse epidemiology and
prevention. He currently serves as the co-PI of the largest evaluation of a shaken baby prevention program ever conducted. He is currently developing a cell phone based parenting program initially for adolescent parents. The program will include informational videos, nurse case management (phone, text, and email), online and text based peer support, screening and referral for high-risk conditions (such as depression).

Learn more about primary care research and exciting success stories at:

North Carolina Network Consortium

UNC Family Med Research