Holmes named UNC Lambeth Distinguished Chair in Public Policy

August 14, 2024

Dr. Mark Holmes stands in front of a rural hospital.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has named Mark Holmes, PhD, the Thomas Willis Lambeth Distinguished Chair in Public Policy. The award is a five-year term professorship that honors faculty members who have contributed in the area of public policy, available only to faculty members in the College of Arts and Sciences, the Gillings School of Global Public Health, the Kenan-Flagler Business School, the School of Government, the School of Education, the School of Law, and the School of Social Work.

Candidates for the Lambeth Distinguished Chair are selected based on their contributions to the development of public policy in North Carolina, demonstration of the value of public service and inclusion of students in their work. Holmes is the first candidate from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health to receive this distinguished honor.

Holmes is professor of health policy and management at the Gillings School and director of the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, where he is also the director of the North Carolina Rural Health Research and Policy Analysis Center.

For more than 25 years, Holmes has been a leader in health policy research and teaching, and his expertise is focused on rural health and health policies, particularly health care utilization and using administrative datasets to capture area-level health care access, utilization and burden of disease.

In 2014, he received the Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement by Young Faculty. In 2015 he was named Outstanding Researcher by the National Rural Health Association. He has provided testimony to Congress on his rural health expertise on multiple occasions and served on the National Advisory Committee for Rural Health and Human Services. He is currently principal investigator of the evaluation of N.C.’s Medicaid transformation.

Dr. Kristin Reiter

“Dr. Mark Holmes exemplifies the qualities the Lambeth Chair seeks to honor and promote,” said Kristin Reiter, PhD, Humana Distinguished Professor and chair of health policy and management at the Gillings School. “He has dedicated his career to conducting research that policymakers in N.C. and across the nation can use to improve health. He involves students in all of his work, generously sharing his time, networks and expertise to develop the next generation of leaders in policy-relevant research. I am delighted that he has been recognized with this well-deserved honor.”

Additional recipients of this year’s Lambeth Distinguished Chair include F. Joel Fodrie, PhD, from the Department of Earth, Marine and Environmental Sciences, Jeffrey Hoopes, PhD, from the Kenan-Flagler Business School, Amanda Thompson, PhD, from the Department of Anthropology, and Cynthia Fraga Rizo, PhD, from the School of Social Work.

Contact the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health communications team at sphcomm@unc.edu.