Bio
Dr. Giselle Corbie-Smith is an Associate Professor of Social Medicine and Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed medical school at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and trained as an Internal Medicine Intern, Resident and Chief Resident at Yale University School of Medicine. She received a Masters of Science in Clinical Research from the Epidemiology Department at Emory University. Her interest in minority health issues, especially access to care and the influence of culture, race, ethnicity, and social class on health, dates from early in her academic career. Her clinical work has always focused on serving underserved populations in public hospitals or clinics. She maintains a clinical practice at a local community health center.
Since joining the faculty at UNC in 2000, she has continued her research on the appropriate engagement of communities of color in research with funding from the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities, the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Institute of Nursing Research, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Among other projects, she is the Principal Investigator of Project GRACE, a community-based participatory research partnership in Eastern North Carolina. She is the Director of the Minority Recruitment Core of the Carolina-Shaw Partnership for the Elimination of Health Disparities (Project Connect;
http://www.connect.unc.edu).
The Core’s main goal is to build community-academic relationships to increase minority participation in research. As Principal Investigator of the LeARN Study, Dr. Corbie-Smith examined research participants’ attitudes about participating in genetic research across the state of North Carolina. As PI on the Project EAST study, she is focusing on characterizing individual and community influences on research participation in rural African Americans and Latinos to develop innovative, theory based, culturally responsive interventions. Other past and present studies include defining the barriers and facilitators to African American elders use of influenza vaccines; research on HIV risk among older African American women; and studying the impact of training in cultural competency on knowledge and skills among medical students and residents.
Dr. Corbie-Smith is also the Co-Director of the Program on Health Disparities (
http://www.shepscenter.unc.edu/research_programs/health_disparities/index.htm) at the UNC Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. The purpose of this program is to coordinate and enhance disparity research within the Sheps Center and throughout UNC, to build expertise in working with minority communities, and to improve collaboration and communication with minority serving institutions in North Carolina and the nation. Dr. Corbie-Smith is nationally recognized for her scholarly work on the practical and ethical issues of involvement of communities in research and has served on numerous local, regional and national committees. She served on an Institute of Medicine committee examining ethical issues in housing hazard research and she has served as a member of the National Children’s Study Federal Advisory Committee since 2005.
Abstract
Training Promotoras to Promote Mental Health and Prevent Depression: The ALMA Project
North Carolina has one of the fastest growing Latino populations in the country. As a new immigrant community, Latinos in North Carolina face significant mental health stressors with limited resources to address them. Amigas Latinas Motivando el Alma (ALMA), a community-based research pilot project conducted by investigators at UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University, aims to reduce anxiety and depression among Latinas by increasing knowledge in a support group setting. We will describe the development of ourinter-institutional, community-academic partnership, the curricular components and preliminary outcomes from ALMA.
