Meet the Carolina Population Center Faculty Fellows elected in 2024
The Carolina Population Center’s Faculty Fellows elected nine UNC faculty members to join the CPC Fellows program in 2024.
Kavita Arora, School of Medicine (Obstetrics/Gynecology)
Dr. Kavita Shah Arora is an Associate Professor with Tenure and the Division Director for General Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Her clinical, research, and education interests center around reproductive justice and ensuring evidence-based and equitable reproductive health policy, with a focus on sterilization disparities.
Samuel Baxter, Epidemiology
Dr. Samuel Baxter is a Nominated Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. He has expertise in applying quantitative methods and community-engaged research approaches to work with racially diverse populations across varied community settings. His research is focused on men’s health, cardiovascular disease prevention, and place-base disparities. Dr. Baxter’s ongoing research applies equity and ecological frameworks to highlight psychosocial and environmental determinants of cardiovascular disparities.
Ganga Bey, Epidemiology
Dr. Ganga Bey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology within the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She studies how people’s beliefs about identity, worth, and ability affect their stress, aging, and susceptibility to disease.
Lauren Gaydosh, Sociology
Dr. Lauren Gaydosh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology. Her primary research focuses on better understanding the role of early life environments in shaping health across the life course. This work integrates social, contextual, and biological data from population-based longitudinal studies to examine how inequalities in the social environment get under the skin to create health disparities.
Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, Sociology
Dr. Elizabeth Korver-Glenn is an Assistant Professor of Sociology. Her research focuses on how housing inequality persists in contemporary urban contexts as well as how such inequality can be mitigated.
Manuel Schectl, Public Policy
Dr. Manuel Schechtl is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy. His work examines the creation, persistence, and reproduction of inequality, poverty, and mobility, with substantive interests in wealth and its intersection with public policy.
Natalicio Serrano, Health Behavior
Dr. Natalicio (Nat) Serrano is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Behavior at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. His research focuses on creating equitable and sustainable environment and policy strategies for physical activity promotion and chronic disease prevention. He is particularly interested in understanding and addressing issues related to neighborhood development, racial and economic segregation, gentrification, and displacement.
Jaime Slaughter-Acey, Epidemiology
Dr. Jaime Slaughter-Acey is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology with training and expertise in social epidemiology and maternal and child health epidemiology. Her research focuses on socio-environmental, and psychosocial factors that contribute to health across the life course, with emphasis on women and families from marginalized and/or underserved populations and health equity.
Lauren Valentino, Sociology
Dr. Lauren Valentino is an Assistant Professor of Sociology. Her research focuses on culture & cognition and inequality & stratification. She uses a cognitive approach to culture in order to understand how people form diverse beliefs and perceptions about important stratifying institutions in society — like discrimination, occupations, social movements, and schools and universities — to show how these beliefs and perceptions in turn shape inequality.