Our research strengths include:
- Developing a strong evidence base to improve health policies, programs and practices for women and children, locally and globally;
- Working in interdisciplinary teams to develop innovative solutions for addressing health disparities among women and children;
- Using innovative approaches, including implementation science, to support the successful implementation of proven women’s and children’s interventions at scale; and
- Using quantitative and qualitative methods to improve the health of women, children and families in North Carolina, the nation and the world.
Primary Research Interests
Reproductive Health and Women’s Health
- Monitoring maternal morbidity
- Prematurity and pre-term birth
- HIV and AIDS in developing countries
- Contraceptive use dynamics
- Environmental exposures related to reproductive and developmental outcomes
- Drug and alcohol use during pregnancy
- Tobacco use during pregnancy
- Violence against women
- Prevention of unintended pregnancy and STIs
- Obesity among reproductive-aged women
- Mother-child dyads
Infant, Child and Adolescent Health
- Infant mortality
- Breast feeding and complementary feeding
- Health and safety in childcare
- Infant and child growth and development
- Children and adolescents with special health care needs
- Autism and developmental disabilities
- Birth defects monitoring
- Childhood hunger
- Biosocial models of adolescent development
- Child abuse and neglect
- Child health policy and service systems
- Access to care for vulnerable children
- Role of migration on child health status and access to care
- Child and adolescent injury prevention
Health Inequities and Health Economics
- Monitoring and evaluation methods for population and health programs
- Social services for children and families (statistical) methodology
- Health disparities by race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status
- Neighborhood effects on health
- Child survival, displaced populations, HIV/AIDS orphans
- Human rights
- Impact of globalization
