Academic Partners

Altpeter, Mary, PhD
Senior Scientist, Institute on Aging, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests

  • Designing and testing effective health promotion interventions for middle and older aged workers at the worksite

Expertise

  • Designing health promotion interventions for older adults
  • Evaluation of evidence-based health promotion for older adults
  • Training personnel to plan, deliver, and evaluate health promotion programs

Baker, Edward Jr., MD
Research Professor of Health Policy and Management, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests

  • Workforce development
  • Information systems
  • Public health policy

Expertise

  • Occupational medicine
  • Environmental hazard exposure

Bowen, Gary L., PhD
Kenan Distinguished Professor, School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests

  • Mental health and substance abuse problems among military personnel and veterans, including post-traumatic stress disorder and service-related traumatic brain injuries

Expertise

  • Work-family spillover
  • Mental health problems among military personnel
  • Veterans and their families
  • Effects of parents’ work demand on children and youth
  • Community and health

Casteel, Carri, MPH, PhD
Research Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Associate Professor of Occupational and Environmental Health, The University of Iowa College of Public Health
Interests

  • Methods of reaching small businesses with occupational health and safety programs, organizational-level program adoption
  • Community-based participatory research
  • Translational research
  • Evaluation research

Expertise

  • Epidemiology
  • Workplace violence prevention

Coppola, Susan, MS, OTR/L, BCG, FAOTA
Clinical Associate Professor, Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, Department of Allied Health Sciences, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests

  • Occupation as a therapeutic mechanism at the individual and population level
  • Mental and physical health benefits of work

Expertise

  • Use of occupation as prevention of decline in older adulthood
  • Gerontology

Crump, Carolyn, PhD
Research Associate Professor of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests

  • Workforce leadership and management capacity
  • Integration of public health principles with human capital management
  • Workforce competence in policy, environmental and system strategies
  • Complex governance systems

Expertise

  • Injury prevention
  • Workforce capacity and strategic planning
  • Environmental health
  • Changing the built environment
  • Workforce capacity for policy, environmental, and system change

Domino, Marisa, PhD
Professor of Health Policy and Management, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests

  • Health economics
  • Mental health economics and policy
  • Policies affecting labor market outcomes for persons with mental illness

Expertise

  • Medicaid claims data analyses
  • Applied econometric methods
  • Mental health policy

Duncan, Dean, III, MUA, PhD
Research Professor, School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests

  • TANF and employment training
  • Foster care and employment training

Expertise

  • Use of administrative data
  • Employment programs for TANF participants
  • Foster care and employment outcomes

Gilleskie, Donna, PhD
Professor of Economics, College of Arts and Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests

  • Role of health, health behavior, and health insurance on employment behavior and employment outcomes
  • Measuring the effect of health on work productivity and valuing lost productivity due to health

Expertise

  • Health insurance and retirement

Hoffman, David, MS, PhD
Hugh L. McColl Distinguished Professor and Area Chair of Organizational Behavior, Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests

  • Leadership
  • Organizational culture and organizational (safety) climate
  • Multi-level research methods

Expertise

  • Leadership
  • Organizational culture and organizational (safety) climate
  • Healthcare

Kneipp, Shawn, MS, PhD
Associate Professor, School of Nursing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests

  • Health disparities/socioeconomic determinants of health
  • Women’s health disparities related to welfare-to-work
  • Public health nursing interventions

Expertise

  • Community-based participatory research (CBPR)
  • Welfare-to-work issues/low-income women’s health
  • The relationship between chronic stress and health outcomes among low-income women

Konrad, Thomas R., PhD
Senior Scientist, Institute On Aging, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Professor of Social Medicine, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Professor of Health Policy and Administration, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Program Director of the Primary Care and the Health Professions Research Program, Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Service Research, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests

  • Occupational health of health workers, particularly chronic stress among allied and auxiliary health care workers (e.g., CNAs, habilitation aides, home health aides)
  • Workforce sustainability

Expertise

  • Survey research
  • Focus group
  • Executive interviews
  • Measurement of job satisfaction, stress, burnout among health professionals

Leeman, Jennifer, MDiv, MPH, DrPH
Assistant Professor, School of Nursing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests

  • Effective translation, dissemination, and implementation of findings from research to improve practice with a focus on preventing obesity

Expertise

  • Identifying, evaluating, and packaging evidence
  • Disseminating evidence
  • Building practitioners’ capacity to use evidence in practice
  • Evidence-based practice in obesity prevention

Linnan, Laura, ScD, CHES
Professor of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests

  • Chronic disease prevention – cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and related risk factors (tobacco use, diet, physical activity, weight)
  • Addressing health disparities based upon race/ethnicity, geography, income with community-based participatory research principles
  • Research on the intersections of work, health and family-community-life balance

Expertise

  • Use community-based participatory research principles to plan, deliver and evaluate interventions in collaboration with individuals from worksites, colleges/universities, beauty/barber shops, public libraries, and other community-based settings
  • Interdisciplinary research to address health disparities
  • Designing/developing innovative process and outcome evaluations utilizing both quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches

Melvin, Cathy L., PhD, MPH
Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences, College of Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina
Interests

  • Disseminating and implementing evidence-based approaches to health prevention and promotion
  • Smoking cessation approaches
  • Worksite policies and programs for tobacco control, prevention and cessation

Expertise

  • Tobacco cessation, prevention and control
  • Dissemination and implementation research and practice
  • Cancer prevention and control, especially for breast and colorectal cancers
  • Approaches to implementing evidence-based interventions in healthcare and community settings, including workplaces

Nylander-French, Leena, PhD
Professor of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests

  • Individual genetic differences in the function of enzymes that detoxify hazardous environmental or occupational agents and that affect development of disease

Expertise

  • Consequences of human exposure to toxic substances
  • Exposure assessment
  • Biomarkers
  • Toxicokinetics

Perreira, Krista, MSPH, PhD
Professor of Public Policy and Associate Dean of the Office for Undergraduate Research, College of Arts and Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Interests

  • Public policy analysis
  • Demography of immigration
  • Adolescent health, education, and employment

Expertise

  • Maternal and child health
  • Migration and health

Ribisl, Kurt, PhD
Professor of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests

  • Tobacco control policy
  • Smoking cessation at the workplace
  • Clean indoor air policies

Expertise

  • Preventing tobacco sales to minors
  • Reducing tobacco advertising targeting racial and ethnic populations at the point of sale
  • Regulating tobacco sales and marketing
  • Clean indoor air policy

Rogers, Bonnie, DrPH, COHN-S, FAAN, LNCC
Director, NC Occupational Safety and Health Education and Research Center and Occupational Nursing Program, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Expertise

  • Occupational health
  • Hazards to healthcare workers
  • Ethics in occupational health
  • Education in occupational health
  • International occupational health

Runyan, Carol, PhD
Adjunct Professor of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Director, Pediatric Injury Prevention, Education and Research (PIPER) Program, Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado

Professor of Epidemiology and Professor of Community and Behavioral Health, Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado
Interests

  • Work-related injury and violence
  • Occupational safety, especially in young workers

Expertise

  • Young workers/child labor
  • Workplace violence
  • Conceptual approaches to prevention
  • Evaluation of interventions
  • Training of professionals

Weiner, Bryan J., PhD
Professor of Health Policy and Management, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests

  • Organizational implementation and maintenance of new policies, programs, practices and inter-organizational relationships that pertain to employee or community health
  • Organizational leadership and management as they pertain to employee health

Expertise

  • Qualitative methods
  • Conceptual/theory development
  • Organizational theory
  • Implementation science

Community Partners

Barlow, Ruth, RN, MS
Occupational Health Services Director, The EI Group, Inc.
Interests

  • Worksite wellness
  • Health promotion

Expertise

  • Worksite wellness for government entities
  • Onsite and virtual wellness programming
  • Occupational health

Davis, Whitney, MPH
Research and Evaluation Director, Prevention Partners
Interests

  • Preventative benefits, policies, and environments in worksite settings
  • Data and evaluation related to worksite wellness policies and benefits

Expertise

  • Assessing worksite wellness policies
  • Training worksites to implement or improve wellness policies (related to tobacco cessation, healthy foods, and physical activity)

Molloy, Meg, DrPH, MPH, RD
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
President and CEO, Prevention Partners
Interests

  • Impact of policy and environmental strategies that address tobacco, nutrition, physical activity health and economic outcomes
  • Effect of incentives on changing behavior of individuals and organizations
  • Social enterprise models to increase scale of worksite wellness

Expertise

  • Tobacco-free, tobacco cessation benefits
  • Healthy food environment, nutrition benefits
  • Workplace physical activity models
  • Worksite leadership and capacity for sustaining wellness

Petersen, Ruth, MD, MPH
Section Chief, Chronic Disease and Injury Section, North Carolina Division of Public Health, Department of Health and Human Resources
Interests

  • Chronic disease and injury prevention

Expertise

  • Preventive medicine
  • Public health infrastructure
  • Public health and health system changes

Thomas, Cathy, MAEd, CHES
Manager, Community and Clinical Connections for Prevention and Health Branch, North Carolina Division of Public Health, Department of Health and Human Services
Interests

  • Promoting healthy eating and physical activity in all sectors

Expertise

  • School and community health
  • Health education to public health administrators, school leaders, school teachers, and school health coordinators
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CONTACT INFORMATION
Project Director: Maija Leff
(919) 843-2662

More CCRWH Contact Information