A message from Penny Gordon-Larsen, Vice Chancellor for Research

Dear colleagues,

I am pleased to announce that Kathryn E. (Beth) Moracco has been named director of the UNC Injury Prevention Research Center (IPRC), effective September 1, 2024. Moracco brings over 15 years of experience in higher education leadership to her role and is widely recognized as an outstanding teacher, mentor, practitioner, and researcher.

Moracco has served as interim director of IPRC since February of this year. Before her interim appointment, she was associate director of the institute since 2017. She is also an associate professor in the Department of Health Behavior at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and serves as the University’s Chair of the Faculty.

As a researcher and a public health practitioner, Moracco is skilled in intervention development and evaluation research and an expert in engaging with communities and community-based organizations. Her research focuses upon the primary and secondary prevention of gender-based violence in the U.S. and global settings using qualitative and quantitative methods. She holds a bachelor’s in political science with a certificate in African Studies from the University of Florida, and a Master of Public Health and Ph.D. in Health Behavior from Gillings.

For more than 30 years, researchers at IPRC have addressed vital societal issues including domestic abuse, motor vehicle crashes, traumatic brain injury, child maltreatment, workplace safety, and opioid overdose — and have worked closely with practitioners to change policies and save lives. IPRC is responsible for hundreds of research projects that have improved the wellbeing of people in our state and beyond.

Under Moracco’s interim leadership, IPRC renewed its funding as a Centers for Disease Control Injury Control Research Center (ICRC). It is one of eleven active ICRCs nationwide, and one of only two to be continuously funded since the program’s inception.

Please join me in congratulating Beth on assuming her new role.

Penny Gordon-Larsen
W. R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor
Vice Chancellor for Research