Current Sheps Center Research

The Sheps Center continually assesses its research agenda to ensure that resources are applied to questions of importance to health policy. Current research and evaluation work is divided into the following areas.

Aging, Disability, and Long-Term Care: This program operates in affiliation with the North Carolina Institute on Aging to improve the well-being of older persons with chronic illness. The program emphasizes factors that affect functional status and promote self-care, independent living, and quality of life among older adults.
Child Health Services: The Program on Child Health Services focuses on ways to ensure the development, implementation, and evaluation of high quality, evidence-based services for children and women in their child-bearing years. The Program works with national, regional, state, and local organizations and agencies to improve child health and child health services through research that assures that child health services will be accessible, affordable, comprehensive, coordinated, community-based, and culturally competent.
Health Care Economics and Finance: The Center focuses on both the general economics of personal health services, as well as the specifics of program and organizational finance. In the former category, the Center’s emphasis is on issues of fair and effective distribution of resources, both public and private. In the financial sector, issues of efficiency and productivity in delivery units and targeted programs are examined.
Health Care Organization: The program seeks to understand the fundamental changes confronting providers and the way in which the organization of medical services at the community level influences the diffusion of prevention and early detection services.
Health Disparities: The Program on Health Disparities works to foster multidisciplinary, policy-relevant research to improve the health and healthcare of underserved communities through community and academic partnerships in research, teaching, and dissemination of knowledge.
Health Professions and Primary Care: Historically, much of the Sheps Center's research in primary care has addressed the access, personnel, organization, quality, and cost issues that pertain to health services delivery, especially in rural areas. Current research efforts in this program include addressing issues of recruitment and retention of health care practitioners in rural practice, as well as the projection of need and demand for health professional personnel.
Medical Practice and Prevention: With Research Triangle Institute, the Sheps Center has been designated an Evidence-Based Practice Research Center by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Studies focusing on a number of health conditions and clinical procedures are underway. The program also conducts a number of studies on enhancing the quality of patient care.
Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services and Systems Research: This program searches for effective models of short- and long-term care for people with acute and chronic mental illness.
Rural Health Research: The North Carolina Rural Health Research Program (NCRHRP) brings together a number of funded projects that focus on improving access to health care services for rural populations. Housed within the Program is one of eight designated Rural Health Research Analysis Centers funded by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy, HRSA. The Program also has an ongoing partnership with the N.C. Foundation for Advanced Health Programs, Inc. of the Office of Research, Demonstrations, and Rural Health Development in the N.C. Department of Human Resources.
Health Policy Analysis Unit: This unit’s activities focus on research and evaluation of issues that are of direct or immediate policy relevance, especially to North Carolinians. The unit serves as a link between Center researchers and communities, organizations, and institutions with interests in health. The staff of the unit includes experts in dissemination, research design, library science, and policy analysis.
Women’s Health Services Research: The Program for Women’s Health Services Research, emphasizes research related to improving the delivery of health services to women, and is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill Center for Women’s Health Research. The Center, founded in March 2000, is a joint effort of the School of Medicine, the School of Pubic Health, and the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research.

North Carolina Institute of Medicine

The Sheps Center is the UNC-Chapel Hill host of the North Carolina Institute of Medicine, an independent, nonprofit organization created by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1983 to serve as a non-political source of analysis and advice on issues of relevance to the health of North Carolina’s population. The Institute is a convener of persons and organizations with health-related expertise, a provider of carefully conducted studies of complex and often controversial health issues, and a source of advice regarding available options for problem solution. The mission of the Institute is to seek constructive solutions to statewide problems that impede the improvement of health care for all North Carolina citizens, to serve an advisory mechanism and a consensus builder, and to assist in formation of public policy on complex and inter-related issues concerning health care for the people of North Carolina.