News
Impact Awards: Two trainees are recognized for their research accomplishments
January 23, 2023The UNC-Chapel Hill Graduate School’s Impact Awards are designed to recognize the significance of graduate student research and their contributions to North Carolina in areas of education and economic, physical, social or cultural well-being. This year, two of the eleven recipients are Trainees at the Carolina Population Center. The eleven students and recent alumni honored…
A triple Tar Heel: Alexis Dennis
May 3, 2022
Crisis pregnancy centers come up short in providing access to information on pregnancy options
August 9, 2021Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), also called pregnancy resource centers, are non-profit and often religiously affiliated organizations that operate with the goal of convincing people considering abortion to continue their pregnancies. With more than 2,500 locations across the U.S., they are more prevalent than abortion clinics but do not provide the same level of pregnancy-related care.…
A Framework for Operationalizing the Structural Racism Construct in Minority and Immigrant Health Research
June 18, 2021Racism is now widely recognized as a fundamental cause of health inequalities in the United States and health scholars are examining the role of structural racism in fostering morbidity and mortality. But much of the prior scholarship about structural racism and health in the U.S. has narrowly focused on disparities between Black and White people or…
Interview: Rapid testing of COVID-19 messaging
June 1, 2021Predoctoral Trainee Sophie Bartels (Health Behavior) is the lead author on a new research study on rapid testing of COVID-19 messaging published in Public Health Reports. The paper describes the development of an interdisciplinary rapid message testing model to quickly create, test, and share messages with public health officials for use in health campaigns and policy…
Predoctoral trainee wins $25,000 for composting business
April 26, 2021Predoctoral Trainee Mallory Wolfe Turner writes, “The business venture I have co-founded with Kirstie Moore, LocalRoots Compost, was selected as one of 15 $25,000 winners for the Victoria’s Secret Pink with Purpose Project. LocalRoots Compost leverages the combined buying power of local restaurants to secure low prices on compostable food ware, and then incentivizes restaurant…
Trainee Cyrus Sinai publishes in The Conversation
March 26, 2021An online article co-authored by Trainee Cyrus Sinai on solar energy solutions for COVID vaccine cold chain is now up on The Conversation Africa. In addition, Sinai is part of a multi-institutional team with Duke’s Energy Access Project (EAP@Duke) and the World Resource Institute (WRI) ) that was recently awarded a 1-year grant / consultancy…
Trainee Khristopher Nicholas featured on Data Night podcast
March 8, 2021From the Odum Institute podcast: In our latest episode, we chatted with Khristopher Nicholas, a fourth-year Nutrition PhD candidate at UNC Gillings School of Public Health and a trainee at the Carolina Population Center, who is interested in the intersections of health, food, and sustainability. We spoke to Khristopher about his current research, which involves food and…
Positive messaging could play a key role in increasing COVID-19 mask compliance
January 22, 2021The perception of mask-wearing, an effective part of a comprehensive public health strategy to prevent the spread of COVID-19, has become an intense talking point in American discourse. Because messaging has a large impact on community adherence to public health guidance, many agencies are now seeking the most effective strategies to communicate the importance…
Trainee Spotlight: Meng-Jung Lin
July 3, 2020Meng-Jung Lin is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology and a Predoctoral Trainee at the Carolina Population Center. CPC intern Ryan Holmes conducted this interview in the spring of 2020. Q: Tell me about yourself—how did you land at CPC? Lin: I am a sociology PhD student, and my research interests are social…