PROJECTS

Primary Investigator for NCCIH-Funded K01 Study

Scaling-up Integrative Pain Management

in Federally Qualified Health Centers

Dr. Isabel Roth, DrPH, MS, Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation’s Program on Integrative Medicine, was awarded a K01* career development award from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health in July 2022. Her mentorship team is led by Dr. Jennifer Leeman from the School of Nursing, Dr. Shabbar Ranapurwala and Dr. Justin Trogdon from the Gillings School of Public Health, Dr. Susan Gaylord from the School of Medicine, and Dr. Paula Gardiner from the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Integrative Medical Group Visits

Dr. Roth’s project, Scaling-up Integrative Pain Management in Federally Qualified Health Centers, will seek to develop implementation strategies to effectively integrate Integrative Medical Group Visits into community health centers. Integrative Medical Group Visits provide training in mindfulness, nutrition, and other self-care techniques to patients with chronic pain, and are led by a billing provider and mindfulness or yoga instructor. Together with Dr. Jessica Barnhill and others, Dr. Roth helped launch Integrative Medical Group Visits at the UNC Center for Rehabilitation Care in 2020. Roth argues that they have the potential to make non-pharmacological pain management more accessible to underserved communities, which is particularly important in light of the ongoing opioid epidemic.

Research associate and site PI for

The OPTIMUM Clinical Trial

The OPTIMUM Trial hopes to determine if an 8-week group-based pain management program can help patients with chronic low-back pain. The group-based intervention is modeled on the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program which is now recommended for treating chronic low back pain by the American College of Physicians.

Low Back Pain

Integrative Medicine for Pediatric Pain Management

In 2017, Dr. Roth conducted an ethnography to learn more about how complementary therapies were integrated into the pediatric hospital environment.

Integrative Medicine for Pediatric Pain Management