Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research

Information About the Sheps Center

• Mission
• Resources
• Organization, Structure, and Governance
• Policy board

Mission

Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research seeks to improve the health of individuals, families, and populations by understanding the problems, issues and alternatives in the design and delivery of health care services. This is accomplished through an interdisciplinary program of research, consultation, technical assistance and training that focuses on timely and policy-relevant questions concerning the accessibility, adequacy, organization, cost and effectiveness of health care services and the dissemination of this information to policy makers and the general public.
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Resources

The Center's most valuable resources are its faculty research fellows, staff and associates. Over 120 personnel occupy offices in the Center's facility on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard (Historic Airport Road) in Chapel Hill. The staff is composed of faculty-level research fellows, research assistants, programmers and data entry personnel, librarians, business office and other support staff, as well as graduate assistants, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars, visiting international research fellows and pre- and post-doctoral fellows.

Also affiliated with the Center are 150 research fellows representing more than 20 disciplines at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University in Durham, North Carolina State University in Raleigh and several private and public agencies throughout North Carolina, the United States and other countries.

The Center's resources include state-of-the-art communications using state-of-the-art equipment with the UNC-CH Information Technology Services and an intranet of micro-computers used for word and data processing, presentation development and desktop publishing. The Center offers immediate, 24-hour electronic communication with co-workers located throughout the world via its FTP and World Wide Web server sites. An additional, frequently used resource is the Center's specialized library that supplements the University's extensive holdings.

The Center supports itself with funds from the State of North Carolina and with contracts and grants from several philanthropic foundations and federal government agencies, most notably the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (ACHPR) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which includes the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute on Aging, the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
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Organization, Structure, and Governance

The Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research is a unit of the University's Division of Health Affairs. The Center's director reports to the Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development. Oversight responsibility of the Center is vested in a Policy Board whose members include senior faculty and administrators from the five health science schools, departments from the Division of Academic Affairs, as well as representatives of the health services community at large. The director receives assistance in planning and leading the Center's activities from four deputy directors, three associate directors, two assistant directors, and from program directors responsible for specific substantive areas of research.
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Policy board

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