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Brian Wells Pence, PhD | Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases

Brian Wells Pence, PhD

Associate Director, Division of Global Mental Health in the Department of Psychiatry

Professor of Epidemiology

Brian-Wells-Pence-IGHID-Profile

Contact Information

Address

Office:
2103C McGavran-Greenberg Hall
CB#7435
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599

Resources

Brian Wells Pence, PhD

Associate Director, Division of Global Mental Health in the Department of Psychiatry

Professor of Epidemiology

Areas of Interest

Global mental health, HIV, implementation science, suicide prevention

About

Dr. Pence is a behavioral, psychiatric, and infectious diseases epidemiologist. His research spans three interrelated areas: global mental health, including scaling up mental health treatment interventions for vulnerable populations; the intersection of mental illness with other health crises including the HIV and opioid epidemics; and suicide prevention research. His work integrates intervention research, implementation science, advanced epidemiologic methods for observational data, and research leveraging large administrative data sources. Examples of current or recently funded projects include SHARP (the Sub-Saharan Africa Regional Partnership for Mental Health Capacity-Building, an NIMH U19 implementation science project focused on integrating depression treatment into general medical care in Malawi); TRACE (Tailored Response to Address Psychiatric Comorbidity and HIV Care Engagement, an NIMH R34 project to pilot-test a mental health intervention for people living with HIV in the southern US); INSPIRE (Innovations in Suicide Prevention Research, an NIMH R01 to establish a suicide surveillance system in North Carolina and use it to identify intervention points for suicide prevention); and a NIDA R21 (acronym needed!) to examine the relationship of different long-term opioid prescribing patterns with opioid-related (overdose) and infectious disease (HIV, HCV, syphilis) outcomes. He is also the director of a NIAID T32 pre- and postdoctoral training program in infectious diseases epidemiology and associate director for research of an NIMH D43 training program in mental health research for Malawian scientists. He is a Professor of Epidemiology, Associate Director of the Division of Global Mental Health in the Department of Psychiatry, Member of the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, and affiliated faculty of the Injury Prevention Research Center at UNC. With Dr. Kathryn Whetten, Dr. Pence co-authored the second edition of You’re the First One I’ve Told: The Faces of HIV in the Deep South (Rutgers University Press, 2013). This book presents the life histories of 25 individuals infected with HIV and living in the US Deep South and highlights in particular the high prevalence and profound influence of traumatic life experiences for these individuals. In the second edition, the original qualitative findings are substantiated with new quantitative research, primarily drawn from the Coping with HIV/AIDS in the Southeast (CHASE) longitudinal cohort study of over 600 HIV-infected individuals from across the Southeastern US.

Awards and Honors

  • Excellence in Mentoring Award, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2024
  • Teaching Innovation Award, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2022
  • Outstanding Mentor Award, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School, 2017
  • Edward G. McGavran Excellence in Teaching Award, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2016

In the news

Education

  • Undergraduate

    Yale University

  • MPH

    Columbia University

  • PhD

    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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