January 20, 2010
Professor Betsy Sleath, PhD, has been named the interim chair of the Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She will officially assume the position’s duties on March 1.
Mick Murray, PharmD, MPH, is stepping down as chair of the division and returning to Indiana where he will assume the positions of Distinguished Professor of Pharmacy Practice and Endowed Chair of Medication Safety at Purdue University School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and executive director of the Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Improvement and Research at Regenstrief Institute. According to Dean Robert Blouin, the School will initiate a national search for a new chair.
Sleath joined the School in 1995 after spending two years as an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico. She became an associate professor in 2000 and was promoted to full professor in 2008. She holds doctorate degrees in pharmacy and sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In addition to her position at the School, Sleath is an adjunct professor at the UNC School of Public Health and a research fellow at the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research. She was appointed in 2008 to the Food and Drug Administration Risk Communication Advisory Committee, which advises the agency on ways to improve communication with the public about the risks and benefits of FDA-regulated products. Sleath is chair of the social and administrative science section of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. She was also recently named co-director of the community engagement core of the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute.
Sleath’s research focuses on physician-patient communication about medication and health issues, ethnic and racial differences in medication use, and health behavior and medication adherence. She is principal investigator on a $2.65 million grant from the National Eye Institute to study how physician-patient communication affects health outcomes in glaucoma patients. She is also principal investigator on a $1.6 million grant from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute for a project that looks at how communication between pediatricians and children with asthma and their caregivers is related to asthma control and children outcomes.
Sleath’s work has been funded by, among others, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute; the National Institute on Aging; the National Institute of Mental Health; the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; and the Bayer Institute for Health Communication.
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