Sarah Verbiest, DrPH, MSW, MPH

(she/her)

Sarah is the Director of the Jordan Institute for Families, the Executive Director for the Collaborative for Maternal and Infant Health, and Co-Principal Investigator for the Maternal Health Learning and Innovation Center. She is a Clinical Professor at the School of Social Work. She brings over 20 years of expertise, leadership, and research in women, maternal, child, and family well-being to the team. She supervises programs that serve clinics across North Carolina, serves on policy teams such as the Child Fatality Task Force, holds a robust research portfolio, and has convened statewide coalitions to address maternal and infant mortality disparities. 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 4^th Edition of the Maternal and Child Health textbook that was released in 2021. Her most recent co-edited book – the Maternal Health Practical Playbook – will be released in February 2024. She is a co-founder and co-leader of the 4th Trimester Project and leads the national Show Your Love campaign. She has a doctorate in public health leadership, a masters degree in public health – maternal and child health, and a masters degree in social work – community, management, and policy practice – all from UNC Chapel Hill.

Email: sarah_verbiest@unc.edu
Cell Phone: 919-638-5183

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 in child welfare, mental health, and early childhood systems. He has conducted studies with parenting support models such as 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.

Email: planier@email.unc.edu

Katherine Bryant, MA, MSPH (she/her)

Katherine has been a program director and coordinator for a variety of state and national projects since 2014. Her portfolio includes projects with the Maternal Health Learning and Innovation Center, the Missouri Foundation for Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, PCORI, JSI, 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 Gillings School of Global Public Health in Healthy Policy and Management at UNC 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.

Email: 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.

Email: vette4ee@gmail.com

Todd M. Jensen, PhD MSW (he/him)

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. 

His work attends to: 

• 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

Email: jensen@unc.edu
Office Phone: 919-962-6543

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.  

Email: Allison.Demarco@unc.edu

Nkechi Charles is a doctoral candidate in the Maternal and Child Health Department at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Ms. Charles focuses her time working with the 4th Trimester Project team in a variety of capacities, including qualitative research with new moms and birthing people, implementation practice, communications, project planning and quality improvement. A few of her areas of interest include health justice, maternal health and well-being, and matrescence.

Email: Nkechi.Charles@unc.edu

Isabella Igbanugo is a first-year MSW candidate with a Bachelors in Justice and Law from American University in Washington, DC. Her research experience includes intimate partner violence, childhood maltreatment, and intergenerational trauma. She is interested in research centering on parenting, generational healing, and culturally inclusive approaches to child welfare.

cchinwe@unc.edu

Kun’Tre is a first year MSW student with a vision to establish a private practice and contribute to positive change through policy advocacy. He is a proud father to a 6-year-old daughter. He has a health and wellness business, Health Heroes Connect LLC, which centers around promoting the significance of spiritual, physical, and mental balance. He lives by this quote by Barack Obama “Change will not come if we wait for others, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

kpharaoh@unc.edu