On July 1, 2004, Dr. Tim Carey received the Sarah Graham Kenan Professorship in recognition of his extensive and ongoing contributions to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Carey holds appointments in Internal Medicine and Social Medicine at the UNC-CH School of Medicine. In addition, he holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Epidemiology. He is affiliated with multiple training programs, including the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, the NIH funded Clinical Research Curriculum, the Primary Care Research Fellowship, and the Faculty Development Program in General Internal Medicine. He currently directs the Sheps Center Fellowship in Health Services Research.

Dr. Tim Carey received his medical degree from the University of Vermont. He trained in internal medicine at Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco and then became Medical Director at the Frontier Nursing Service in eastern Kentucky. The Frontier Nursing Service is the oldest nurse practitioner and midwife-based rural health care unit in the United States. In the early 1980’s he came to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill as a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar, later joining the faculty in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology. He received a Masters in Public Health and Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina.

Dr. Carey served for almost 10 years as the Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology at UNC. He served on a number of University committees and also worked with the UNC Healthcare System. In October 2000, he became the Director of the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, succeeding Dr. Gordon DeFriese, who had been Director for almost 28 years. In 2003 he received the John Eisenberg Award for Excellence in Mentorship given by AHRQ and in 2004 he received the American College of Physicians Laureate Award.

Dr. Carey’s research interests have included studies in the area of clinical epidemiology, access to care, and health services research, with over sixty publications. He has extensively examined the epidemiology of musculo/skeletal illnesses including back pain. He has examined the patterns of care of individuals with common musculo/skeletal illnesses, evaluating the quality of care and outcomes of care in multiple settings. He has evaluated access to care and the quality of care in Medicaid managed care organizations. In the mid-1990’s he served on the Institute of Medicine Technical Advisory Committee on Measurement of Access to Care.

In recent years he has served as co-director of the joint RTI-UNC Evidence-Based Practice Center. He has served as Chair of the HQER Study Section of the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality. His research interests have also branched out to include end of life care, including evaluation of technologies such as gastric feeding tubes.

Dr. Carey is an active clinician in both inpatient and outpatient settings, and he teaches courses in the School of Public Health on Evaluation of Medical and Epidemiologic Literature and Health Care Epidemiology .