PROJECTS

Featured Speaker for

The Evolution of Mindfulness Speaker Series

Tuesday April 29th, 2025 12 PM ET

Mindfulness in U.S. Healthcare: Breaking Barriers, Creating Change

The integration of mindfulness into healthcare has expanded rapidly, but how do we ensure that mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) are accessible to patients who may benefit from them?

Join us virtually on Tuesday, April 29 at Noon ET for Mindfulness in U.S. Healthcare: Breaking Barriers, Creating Change with Isabel Roth, DrPH, MS, Assistant Professor at the UNC School of Nursing.

Roth specializes in the implementation of mindfulness-based interventions in clinical settings, with a particular focus on patients experiencing chronic pain. In this talk, she will explore the unique challenges and opportunities in integrating MBPs into primary care. From addressing institutional barriers to ensuring sustainability, she will discuss key factors that influence the success of mindfulness interventions in healthcare environments.

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.

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 recently awarded a K01* career development award from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. 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.

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.

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.