Dr. Brianna M. Lombardi PhD MSW was recently named the Deputy Director for the Carolina Health Workforce Research Center at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. Dr. Lombardi is an emerging expert in workforce needs related to behavioral health integration in primary care settings. Her work has focused on the expanding role of social workers in integrated health settings and the ways they work with other health professionals to increase behavioral health access for underserved groups and address health disparities.

Dr. Lombardi is currently funded to study the barriers and facilitators to behavioral health integration at Federally Qualified Health Centers and will evaluate how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the delivery of team-based care. Dr. Lombardi will hold appointments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and a Research Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work.

Follow Dr. Lombardi on twitter @BriLombardiPhD or check out her Google Scholar page.

Arrianna Marie Planey, PhD MA is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC Chapel Hill. She is also a Faculty Fellow in the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. She is a health/medical geographer with an overarching interest in health and healthcare equity. Her expertise includes conceptualizing and measuring health care access, health workforce issues, and chronic illnesses.

Dr. Planey’s ongoing research includes collaborative studies of birth outcomes (preterm birth and low birth weight) among Black immigrants in segregated neighborhoods, travel burdens borne by rural cancer patients, and the racially disparate effects of rural hospital closures on acute care access. At the core of her research agenda is equity in access and outcomes.

Dr. Planey earned her PhD in Geography from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, after earning her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees at the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley, respectively. She was previously a predoctoral fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Research Scholars (HPRS) program.

David F. Friedlander, MD MPH is an Assistant Professor of urology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. Dr. Friedlander’s research interests lie at the intersection of health care policy, surgical outcomes, and everyday clinical care. His research efforts have focused on characterizing and determining factors associated with high-value pathways of surgical care, with a particular interest in the treatment of urinary stones and benign urological conditions. Ongoing research efforts include using mixed-methods to better define surgical episodes of care and understand both clinical and non-clinical drivers of high-value pathways of care.

After graduating from Bowdoin College, Dr. Friedlander spent a year working in the California State Assembly as a research fellow. Dr. Friedlander received his medical degree from Vanderbilt University during which time he also completed an MPH at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He subsequently completed his residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA, where he stayed on for an NIH-funded research fellowship. He completed a clinical fellowship in endourology and minimally invasive surgery at the University of California-San Diego.

Dr. Saif Khairat is an associate professor with joint appointments at the School of Nursing and the Carolina Health Informatics Program. He is also the Director of the Carolina Applied Informatics Research (CAIR) group. With over a decade of experience, Dr. Khairat has led numerous national and international funded projects to enhance healthcare services and research, specifically within the informatics world. His research agenda comprises of two main areas: (1) telemedicine to bridge health disparities, and (2) health IT usability to improve patient safety.

As an informatics expert, Dr. Khairat focuses on using novel mixed-methods data collection approach coupled with complex data analysis for big datasets. He has authored more than 60 scientific articles in 30 different, peer-reviewed journals and conferences, and has served as an investigator for more than $5.5 million in research grants over the past 5 years. Dr. Khairat was recently awarded $1.3 million in research grant funding from the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health for his project Improving Providers’ Decision-Making and Reducing Information Overload Using Information Visualization in Electronic Health Records.

Dr. Khairat earned his PhD in Health Informatics and bachelor’s and master’s in Computer Science from the University of Missouri, and MPH in Health Policy and Management from the Gillings School of Global Health.

In response to COVID-19, Brian led a project in partnership with NC AHEC and NC DHHS Office of Rural Health to create a database of primary care practices in NC and then assess their PPE, financial, and other needs related to the pandemic. The project coordinated regional NC AHEC coaches and NC DHHS ORH tech support staff to follow up with non-responding practices to make sure as many practices as possible were included. That project led to the creation of the NC Responds system, which will be a permanent resource for those conducting practice-based research. 

Brian’s near-term goals for the IT unit are to conduct a listening tour to get a good understanding of IT needs in relation to existing services offered, track ROI, properly staff the IT teams, partner with ITS to obtain 3^rd party certification of the Sheps Computing Cluster for FISMA (federal security) compliance, and initiate a campaign to get the word out about the great IT services that Sheps offers to researchers. Please feel free to reach out to Brian with any IT needs or questions you have. 

Starting August 2021, the North Carolina Institute of Medicine (NCIOM) will convene the Task Force on the Future of Local Public Health in North Carolina. The goal of this work, supported by the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust and North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, is to assess our state’s local public health needs, strengths, and challenges, and develop a vision for the future. More on the Task Force on the Future of Local Public Health in North Carolina: https://nciom.org/nciom-launches-task-force-on-the-future-of-local-public-health-in-north-carolina/

NCIOM and the South Carolina Institute of Medicine and Public Health launched the Carolinas Pandemic Preparedness Task Force in July 2021. The task force is chaired by North Carolina Secretary of Commerce Machelle Baker Sanders and the University of South Carolina Interim President Dr. Harris Pastides, and the work is supported by the Duke Endowment, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, and Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust. Task force members will develop evidence-based recommendations to support future state and local planning efforts and ensure a resilient response to future disease outbreaks. More on the Carolinas Pandemic Preparedness Task Force: https://nciom.org/north-and-south-carolina-institutes-of-medicine-announce-joint-pandemic-preparedness-task-force/

Innovations Born of COVID-19: Lessons Learned and Changes Made in North Carolina Public Health and Health Care: The latest issue of the North Carolina Medical Journal details how organizations and people from around the state came together, across disciplines and typical priorities, to meet the ever-changing needs of North Carolinians during the COVID-19 crisis.

Arnold (Arnie) Kaluzny is professor emeritus of health policy and management at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and senior research fellow at the Sheps Center. His affiliation with the Center spans 54 years, beginning in 1967. That year, he served as co-principal investigator for a research grant included in the proposal submitted to the U.S. National Center for Health Services to establish the UNC Health Services Research Center.

The following answers are edited for brevity. Dr. Kaluzny’s complete answers are available on the Sheps Center website.

In spring 1988, late on a Friday afternoon, Tom Ricketts walked into my Sheps office, holding the current Commerce Business Daily, which posts recently approved federal contracts (RFAs). He sat down and pushed the paper toward me. “Arnie,” he said, “This has your name on it.”

The RFA requested proposals to evaluate the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) newly funded Community Clinical Oncology Program (CCOP II) and was due within three weeks of the posted date. As it happened, the UNC/Sheps proposal was completed in record time, along with approved subcontracts. Our so-called “best and final” was submitted and approved, and the rest, as they say, “is history.”

I selected this particular memory because it demonstrates the character of the Sheps Center as a university-based research center: its singular focus on providing support to faculty from various departments and schools within UNC, its ability to work with other entities within the university community, and its capability to provide rapid access to references, computer and IT expertise, and grants management support throughout the life of the project. All this is done within a culture of colleagueship and collaboration, of which I have been the beneficiary for all these many years.

While I officially retired from UNC in 2000, my affiliation with the NCI in various capacities continued over the years. In downsizing my Sheps office in preparation for the long-awaited and needed renovation of the building, I discovered the oral history of NCI commissioned in 2008/2009 by Dr. Peter Greenwald. Joined by my colleague, Donna O’Brien, who played an important role in the NCCCP, we prepared a manuscript, “How Vision and Leadership Shaped the U.S. National Cancer Institute’s 50-year Journey to Advance the Evidence Base of Cancer Control and Cancer Care Delivery Research.” The publication of the paper in the Elsevier Journal of Health Policy OPEN in December 2020 aligned with the 50th anniversary of the passage of the 1971 National Cancer Act.

Retirement, in my case, has only been a reality over the past year. The publication mentioned above and the conclusion of formal affiliation with the NCI provided time and opportunity to reflect on life as I lived it. The period of reflection was aided by the pandemic, the COVID lockdown over the past few months, the growing reality of my own mortality, and the fact that my two grandsons – one, a freshman in college, and the other soon to follow – are beginning their own adult lives. Since so many of these reflections involved UNC, and in many respects, the Sheps Center, I completed a manuscript – a memoir, if you will – titled Reflections on a Life Well-Lived. The manuscript has been digitally archived at UNC Wilson Library. I’m not sure I would recommend this emotionally laden process for others as they move into retirement, but in retrospect, I am pleased I made the effort. With that, I move on, hopefully with grace and good will, to meet the new challenges ahead.

All seminars are from 4-5pm EST and will be at this link: https://unc.zoom.us/j/96203302391

Khairat S, McDaniel P, Jansen M, Francis T, Edson B, Gianforcaro R. Analysis of Social Determinants and the Utilization of Pediatric Tele-Urgent Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Cross-sectional Study. JMIR Pediatr Parent. 2021 Aug 30;4(3):e25873. doi: 10.2196/25873. PMID: 34459742.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34459742/ 

Jonas DE, Crotty K, Yun JDY, Middleton JC, Feltner C, Taylor-Phillips S, Barclay C, Dotson A, Baker C, Balio CP, Voisin CE, Harris RP. Screening for Prediabetes and Type 2 Diabetes: Updated Evidence Report and Systematic Review for the US Preventive Services Task Force. JAMA. 2021 Aug 24;326(8):744-760. doi: 10.1001/jama.2021.10403. PMID: 34427595.

“COVID-19 And HIV: Overlapping Pandemics For Criminal Justice-Involved Individuals, " Health Affairs Blog, August 24, 2021. DOI: 10.1377/hblog20210818.753807 https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20210818.753807/full/ (Kate LeMasters)

Swietek KE, Domino ME, Grove LR, Beadles C, Ellis AR, Farley JF, Jackson C, Lichstein JC, DuBard CA. Duration of medical home participation and quality of care for patients with chronic conditions. Health Serv Res. 2021 Aug 17. doi: 10.1111/1475-6773.13710. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 34402047.

Khairat S, Zalla LC, Adler-Milstein J, Kistler C. US Nursing Home Quality Ratings Associated with COVID-19 Cases and Deaths Introduction. J Am Med Dir Assoc. 2021 Aug 7:S1525-8610(21)00682-4. doi: 10.1016/j.jamda.2021.07.034. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 34454922.

Moore RA 2nd, Fried MW, Wright B. Primary Care Providers in Federally Qualified Health Centers Can Treat Hepatitis C Effectively Without Ongoing Consultative Support From Specialists. Med Care. 2021 Aug 1;59(8):699-703. doi: 10.1097/MLR.0000000000001582. PMID: 34081677.

Young JC, Pack C, Gibson TB, Yoon F, Irwin DE, Shiv S, Cooper T, Dasgupta N. Machine Learning Can Unlock Insights Into Mortality. Am J Public Health. 2021 Jul;111(S2):S65-S68. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2021.306418. PMID: 34314195.

Miller KEM, Miller KL, Knocke K, Pink GH, Holmes GM, Kaufman BG. Access to outpatient services in rural communities changes after hospital closure. Health Serv Res. 2021 Jun 25. doi: 10.1111/1475-6773.13694. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 34173227.

To see a full listing of Sheps-affiliated publications from recent months, please click here.

Have feedback on this newsletter or suggested content for future newsletters? Contact Lindsay McCall.