Julie Jacobson Vann, PhD, MS, RN

Clinical Associate Professor | Sustainability Liaison

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
School of Nursing
Campus Box #7460
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7460

Since 1998, Dr. Julie Jacobson Vann has worked on systematic literature reviews aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of interventions to improve vaccination uptake. These interventions include audit and feedback, patient reminder and recall systems, and provider reminders or clinical decision support tools. She initially served as Project Director of this project and moved into the role of Principal Investigator in 2005. Her Cochrane Collaboration systematic literature review and meta-analysis assesses the effectiveness of patient reminder and recall strategies, specifically telephone, letter, postcard, text-message, autodialer, messages through secure patient portals, and combinations of interventions, on increasing vaccination rates. She recently led the third extensive update to the patient reminder and recall systematic review, which involved screening approximately 5,000 scientific abstracts and fully reviewing more than 300 published articles. This systematic review was published in the Cochrane Library in February 2018. She is currently a co-investigator on a related Cochrane Collaboration systematic review of multiple strategies to increase vaccination uptake among adults with a team of investigators with Cochrane South Africa.

For approximately 17 years, Dr. Jacobson Vann planned, directed and evaluated care management and other interventions aimed at improving care and outcomes for North Carolina Medicaid beneficiaries. These projects focused on promoting healthy weight among children and improving self-care for children and adults with chronic conditions. She also assisted clinical practices with implementing Medicare Chronic Care Management services and the Medicare Annual Wellness Visit. This involved developing materials, scripts, forms, and training programs as well as conducting trainings in multiple settings and locations.

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AHEC-SON FACULTY

Dr. Jacobson Vann is an Associate Professor at UNC Chapel Hill in the School of Nursing.  She is passionate about health promotion and disease prevention, environmental health, and greening of health care. She has a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, a Masters degree in Business with a focus on Health Care Management, and a PhD in Health Care Policy and Administration with a minor in Epidemiology.  Dr. Jacobson Vann has 45 years of health services experience that spans research and evaluation, academic teaching, health services and managed care administration, and delivery of public health and patient care services. Her primary research focuses on conducting Cochrane Collaboration systematic reviews focused on strategies to increase vaccination rates. She recently collaborated with a team of scientists with Cochrane South Africa and the South African Research Council on another vaccination-related Cochrane Collaboration systematic literature review. In the School of Nursing, she primarily teaches courses focused on health care policy and leadership, health care financing, economics of health systems, human resource management, public health nursing, and evidence-based practice. She engaged in planning, managing and directing health services research projects for more than 20 years. This experience includes evaluating outcomes, health care costs, and health services utilization associated with Medicaid demonstration program interventions or initiatives, such as chronic disease self-management initiatives, community-based care management services, healthy weight interventions, and prior authorization guidelines for high-cost prescription drugs. She has conducted contract research, evaluation, and technical service projects for a health policy research firm in Washington D.C. on national projects funded by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office of Disability Employment Policy within the U.S. Department of Labor, National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. 

Available for presentations: I am happy to talk about any of the topics listed above, and can develop more specialized programs within any of these categories: 

  • Epidemiology: epidemiological models; epidemiologic study designs; measures of frequency and measures of association; related topics 
  • Introduction to greening of health care 
  • Health policy advocacy: Developing an advocacy plan and message 
  • Introduction to conducting a program evaluation with cost analysis