Sarah Verbiest, DrPH, MSW, MPH

(she/her)

Sarah is the Director of the Jordan Institute for Families and the Executive Director for the Collaborative for Maternal and Infant Health. She is a Clinical Professor at the School of Social Work. She brings over 25 years of expertise, leadership, and research in women, maternal, child, and family well-being to the team. She supervises programs serving clinics across North Carolina, serves on policy teams, including the Child Fatality Task Force, maintains a robust research portfolio, and has convened statewide coalitions to address maternal and infant mortality disparities, caregiving and women’s health. Dr. Verbiest has successfully led complex mixed-methods research studies and leveraged the findings into on-the-ground change. She edited the book Making Change Happen: Moving Lifecourse from Theory to Action (APHA Press, 2018)) which focused on MCH practitioners.  Her book – Preconception Health and Care: A Lifecourse Perspective, was released in August 2020. Dr. Verbiest co-edited the 4th Edition of the Maternal and Child Health textbook, released in 2021. Her most recent co-edited book, the Maternal Health Practical Playbook, was released in February 2024. She holds a doctorate in public health leadership, a master’s degree in public health (maternal and child health), and a master’s degree in social work (community, management, and policy practice), all from UNC-Chapel Hill. She also teaches several graduate level courses and loves the energy and ideas that her students infuse into her scholarship and teaching.

sarah_verbiest@unc.edu
(919) 638-5183

Dr. Erin Kent – Associate Director for Caregiving Research

Dr. Kent is an Associate Professor and Associate Chair for Research in Health Policy and Management at the UNC–Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health, a member of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, a Health Services Research Fellow at the Cecil G. Sheps Center, and a Fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine. She joined the Jordan Institute team in May 2026 as the Associate Director for Caregiving Research.

Dr. Kent’s work centers on developing and implementing supportive care interventions for people with serious illness and conducting research that informs policies to strengthen support for family caregivers across the lifecourse. Her mission is to advance evidence-based strategies that improve caregiver well-being and integrate caregiver support into diverse health care contexts. She leads multiple transdisciplinary collaborations with researchers, clinicians, community partners, and students at UNC and nationally. Prior to joining UNC, she served as a Program at the National Cancer Institute and helped build a research resource portfolio in caregiving, including funding announcements, a national report on cancer caregiving, and survey items on caregiving in the Health Information and National Trends Survey.

Currently, she is adapting, testing, and implementing enCompass, a supportive care coaching intervention for cancer caregivers within cancer care delivery systems. She also partners with state and national organizations to advance recommendations from the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers. She has served as the APOS Caregiver Research Special Interest Group Chair in the past and is invested in growing the society’s work to help support the psychosocial needs of cancer caregivers. She is also Co-Chairing the National Biennial Conference on Caregiving Research.

erin.kent@unc.edu
(919) 966-7373

Allison De Marco, PhD, MSW, is an advanced research scientist at Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, the lead research associate for the Jordan Institute of Families, and adjunct faculty at the School of Social Work at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her work focuses on economic supports for families, leadership development, research methodology, engaging with policy makers and community members, poverty, housing and homelessness.  She was awarded a team Interdisciplinary Research Leadership award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a community-based study entitled, “Overcoming Structural Racism in Housing Stability and Wealth-building: Laying the Foundation for Community Health and Well Being.” This project is in conjunction with her long-term community partner, the Community Empowerment Fund. In 2022 she was awarded the UNC Provost’s Award for Engaged Scholarship for the economic justice course she co-teaches with CEF.

Allison.Demarco@unc.edu

Rakiah earned her MPH in Health Behavior from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Gillings School of Global Public Health. Rakiah’s career commitment is to utilize culturally responsive practices and equity approaches to understand and address disparities in health outcomes. Rakiah hopes to be a champion for her community and evaluate public health efforts to promote meaningful, long-lasting change.

rakiah@unc.edu

Katherine Bryant, MA, MSPH

Katherine has been a program director and coordinator for a variety of state and national projects since 2014. She provides project direction for a number of JIF programs. Her portfolio includes projects with the Maternal Health Learning and Innovation Center, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, PCORI, The Duke Endowment, and HRSA MCHB. She shares her time between projects at JIF and the Collaborative for Maternal and Infant Health. She received her Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Duke University in 2007 and her Master of Science in Public Health from the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC in Healthy Policy and Management in 2010. She is passionate about public health, with a focus on women’s and children’s health, social determinants of health, and health equity.

Katherine_bryant@med.unc.edu

Yvette Thompson, BA, has over 20 years of experience in administration and financial accounting. She has been in a variety of roles at UNC-Chapel Hill over the years. She has strong communication, program coordination, problem-solving, customer service, and business management skills.

vette4ee@gmail.com

Jenna Muller, PhD

Dr. Jenna Muller is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Her research interests primarily include systemic forms of trauma, coping, and mental health. She prides herself on her engagement in interdisciplinary collaborations across fields such as social work, public health, education, and child welfare. Jenna is interested in future research with transformative and social justice-oriented philosophies and methodologies that pursue accessible solutions for marginalized groups. She previously earned her PhD in social work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a master’s degree in public health from the University of Pennsylvania.

LinkedIn

Paul Lanier, MSW, PhD is The Wallace Kuralt Distinguished Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the associate director of the Jordan Institute for Families and a research fellow at the Sheps Center for Health Services research. Dr. Lanier received his doctoral degree from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and was a fellow with the national Doris Duke Fellowship for the Promotion of Child Well-Being. His research focuses on developing, evaluating, and scaling up evidence-based prevention programs across child welfare, mental health, and early childhood systems. He has conducted studies on parenting support models, including Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), the Triple P Positive Parenting Program, Circle of Parents, and several maternal and child health home-visiting models. In addition to his focus on intervention research, Dr. Lanier also uses linked, multi-sector administrative data for policy analysis to improve child well-being. He is also a board member of the North Carolina Infant Mental Health Association.

planier@email.unc.edu

Todd M. Jensen, PhD, MSW

Dr. Jensen is a Research Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work and a Family Research and Engagement Specialist in the Jordan Institute for Families at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also the Associate Director for Research in the Collaborative for Implementation Practice. His scholarship focuses on (a) promoting family well-being in diverse contexts; (b) strengthening family-serving systems; and (c) prioritizing equity in family research, practice, and policy. 

• Families experiencing relationship transitions and shifts in parental structure
• Family maltreatment prevention among military-connected families
• Promoting the use of data and evidence in family-serving systems
• Understanding the role of trusting relationships in optimizing the uptake of effective programs and practices in family-serving systems 
• Advocating for inclusive definitions of family
• Centering equity in the theory and methods used to study and support families and family-serving systems

jensen@unc.edu
(919) 962-6543