Meet the Carolina Population Center Faculty Fellows elected in 2023
The Carolina Population Center’s Faculty Fellows elected eight UNC faculty members to join the CPC Fellows program in 2023.
Regina Baker, Sociology
As a sociologist with training in both sociology and social work, Dr. Baker’s research is fundamentally concerned with poverty and inequality and seeks to understand the factors that create, maintain, and shape socioeconomic conditions and disparities. She is particularly interested in the role of macro social structures and processes that help shape individual outcomes and thus contribute to broader patterns of inequality.
Jess Edwards, Epidemiology
Dr. Edward’s research focuses on using quantitative epidemiologic methods to improve public health, particularly in the area of HIV. Substantively, she is interested in estimating effects of interventions along the HIV continuum of care using clinical data. Methodologically, she focuses on techniques for causal inference in settings with complex or high dimensional exposure plans, measurement error and missing data.
Larissa Jennings Mayo-Wilson, Health Behavior, Maternal and Child Health
Dr. Jennings Mayo-Wilson is a sexual and reproductive health behavioral scientist with methodological skills in epidemiology, biostatistics, and qualitative science. Her research focuses on improving sexual and reproductive health (SRH), including HIV prevention, in vulnerable adolescents and young adults in the U.S. and sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, she is interested in: (i) design and evaluation of economic-strengthening interventions to reduce inequities in HIV/SRH, including microenterprise, cash transfers, savings, and financial incentives; (ii) analysis of economic and structural causes of disparities in HIV/SRH, and (iii) use of mobile health technologies to improve implementation and evaluation of HIV/SRH interventions. Her research also examines socio-economic influences on maternal health care-seeking and uptake of assisted reproductive technologies.
Todd Jensen, Social Work
Dr. Jensen’s scholarship focuses on promoting family well-being in diverse contexts; strengthening family-serving systems; and centering equity in family research, practice, and policy. Specifically, Dr. Jensen’s work attends to families experiencing relationship transitions and shifts in parental structure; family maltreatment prevention among military-connected families; promoting the use of data and evidence in family-serving systems; understanding the role of trusting relationships in optimizing the uptake of effective programs and practices in family-serving systems; advocating for inclusive definitions of family; and centering equity in the theory and methods used to study and support families.
Valerie Lewis, Health Policy and Management
Dr. Lewis is a sociologist and policy researcher with extensive experience researching health care payment and delivery reform, health care organizations, and intersections with health equity and the safety net. She uses a mix of research methods, from quantitative data and sophisticated statistical modeling to in-depth qualitative site visits.
Arrianna Marie Planey, Health Policy and Management
Dr. Planey is a health/medical geographer with expertise in measuring and conceptualizing health care access, health and healthcare equity, and spatial epidemiology. Her research and teaching focuses include the application of spatial analytic/statistical/epidemiologic methods to study interactions between health(care) policies, healthcare access and utilization and underlying, population-level health inequities, and identify points of intervention at structural- and system-levels. Her ongoing research includes collaborative studies of birth outcomes (preterm birth and low birth weight) among Black immigrants in segregated neighborhoods, spatial mismatch by race and gender among workers in US metro areas, and the disparate effects of rural hospital closures on acute care access.
Tara Templin, Health Policy and Management
Dr. Templin’s research interests focus on health system evaluation and the causes of population health improvement. Templin uses a wide range of quantitative tools, from machine learning to quasi-experimental methods for causal inference to generate rigorous evidence on effective policies for improving health in resource-constrained settings.
Caroline Thompson, Epidemiology
Dr. Thompson’s substantive research aims to describe and understand population-level patterns of cancer screening and diagnosis and to identify drivers of disparities in cancer-related healthcare delivery and outcomes across populations. Methodologically, she is interested in improving the valid research-use of complex, longitudinal sources of routine healthcare data (e.g., medical claims and electronic health records) and the use of quantitative bias analysis to evaluate the impact of suspected sources of systematic error in observational research.