Lixin Song Awarded Grants to Study Links Between Health Outcomes and Costs of Care

Assistant professor Lixin Song, RN, PhD recently earned a K12 (BIRCWH) Award and a Junior Faculty Development Award to expand her research on health outcomes and the economics of care.

Dr. Song plans to use the BIRCWH award to pursue interdisciplinary training to support her investigation of how the costs of health services impact patients and caregivers. BIRCWH, which stands for “Building Interdisciplinary Research Centers in Women’s Health,” is an NIH-funded program from the North Carolina Tracs Insitute that provides infrastructure and resources to support junior faculty members who are committed to pursuing research in women’s health. Dr. Song’s mentors for the award will be Drs. Barbara Mark from UNC SON, and Courtney Can Houtven from Duke Medicine.

With her Junior Faculty Development Award, Dr. Song intends to examine the costs incurred by cancer patients and their spouses as well as how these costs impact their quality of life. The awards are funded by The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Foundation and are awarded to promising junior faculty.