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The ºÚÁÏÍø Family Medicine Research Program aims to lead the nation in producing rigorous, extramurally-funded primary care and population health research. Our interdisciplinary team of clinicians, researchers, and staff work closely together—and with groups across ºÚÁÏÍø and numerous collaborating universities and organizations—to generate groundbreaking evidence with a focus on advancing the health and quality of life of diverse populations across the lifespan. We engage with key stakeholders in government, industry, and the non-profit sector to ensure that we are asking the right questions and effectively disseminating the evidence we generate to inform both policy and practice.

Our faculty are nationally and internationally known experts and leaders in a variety of research areas whose work is supported by grants and contracts from state and federal government sources as well as private foundations. We serve North Carolina, the country, and the global community. In our ongoing efforts to grow and improve our research program, we have identified three areas of excellence that are broad enough to capture the diversity of our work, yet focused enough to communicate the themes that unite us across the department.

Areas of Research Excellence

Behavioral Health

The ºÚÁÏÍø Department of Family Medicine pursues a broad scope of research in behavioral health, encompassing the many ways that people’s behaviors and mental health influence their primary care needs and the care that the family medicine workforce provides and coordinates.

• At the patient level, this includes research into the clinical and behavioral aspects of prevalent mental health conditions and substance use, as well as the behavioral aspects of disease management, disease prevention and patient-provider interactions.
• At the organization and systems levels, this includes evaluation of care systems, teams, healthcare professionals’ training and funding for mental and behavioral health services within family medicine offices as well as at the community, state, national and international levels.

Health Access
Health outcome gaps remain a significant challenge in American health care, particularly in areas with higher mortality rates and substantial socioeconomic barriers. These disparities are driven by a range of factors, including stigma, cultural and linguistic differences, and limited access to resources such as quality care and insurance coverage. Given the pervasive nature of these challenges, our work in this field intersects with many other research areas. For example, our faculty are identifying factors contributing to higher tobacco use in underserved populations, addressing socioeconomic disparities in chronic disease management, and exploring how social determinants of health and access to care influence outcomes in disadvantaged communities.

Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
We conduct research to prevent and manage disease across the lifespan. Our work in this area is particularly far-reaching and includes the ºÚÁÏÍø Tobacco Prevention and Evaluation Program (TPEP), the ºÚÁÏÍø Preventive Medicine Residency, the , the Department’s Population Health Program, and the . Our faculty are working to prevent infectious diseases by studying the burden of vaccine-preventable illnesses, and the uptake, safety, and effectiveness of vaccines; shaping policy, practice, and communication to reduce tobacco use; combatting child abuse; furthering our understanding of different approaches to the treatment of chronic diseases (e.g., diabetes and hypertension) and cancer; and addressing the health and long-term care needs of older adults.

Organization, Financing, and Delivery of Care
The U.S. health care system is rapidly approaching $4 trillion in annual spending, but it is not clear that our society is getting an appropriate return on that investment in the form of better health outcomes. Thus, it is more important than ever to study the issues of access, cost, and quality in health care. Our faculty in this area are known for their expertise related to studying the health workforce, the transition to value-based care, studies related to Medicaid and Medicare policy in North Carolina and nationwide, and studies of the role of primary care in improving health care quality and patient outcomes using innovative health IT tools, natural language processing, machine learning, and the use of large secondary datasets. Our faculty also co-direct the a practice-based research network.