John (Mel) Bennett, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Director of Geriatrics Education, Acting Director of the Family Medical Center
Dr. Bennett has long-standing interests in geriatrics and medical education. He is interested in improving delivery of preventive health care through practice systems intervention, such as in a current study of colorectal cancer screening.

Paul Dassow, MD, MSPH, Assistant Professor, Associate Director of Predoctoral Education
Dr. Dassow’s master’s thesis studied physicians’ perceptions of health related quality of life indices. He has been a Fellow with the Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) program, a UK College of Medicine training program funded through a $2.5 million NIH grant. His BIRCWH research project is a patient-level intervention, “Increasing Colorectal Cancer Screening among Kentucky’s Women”. He is also a co-investigator in the department’s “Predoctoral Training in Primary Care” grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). He is the principal investigator of the “Prescription for Health” preventive health research grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Additional research interests involve valuation of health and spirituality in medicine. Dr. Dassow also serves as Co-Director of the UK College of Medicine course MD813, “Healthy Human.”

William G. Elder, Jr., PhD, Associate Professor, Director of Behavioral Sciences
Dr. Elder’s research interests are in primary care treatment of mental disorders, physician-patient relationships, and patient satisfaction. He is the Principal Investigator on a five-year educational training grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM).

Michael D. Hagen, MD, American Board of Family Practice
Dr. Hagen currently serves as Project Director for the Computer-based assessment project of the ABFP. His additional research interests include cost-effectiveness and decision analysis of common problems in primary care, discrete event simulation, continuous quality improvement, and clinical guideline development.

Robert G. Hosey, MD, Associate Professor, Director of Sports Medicine
Dr. Hosey’s research interests include epidemiology and prevention of sports injuries. He completed his sports medicine family medicine fellowship before joining the faculty in 1998. He currently receives support for research activities from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) through a Building Research Infrastructure and Capacity (BRIC) grant awarded to the UK Center for Health Services Management and Research and the Department of Family Practice. He was the Principle investigator on the grant “Ultrasound Measurements of the Spleen in college Athletes with Acute Infectious Mononucleosis: A Prospective Evaluation” and co-investigator on the SYNVISC grant.

Benjamin Huneycutt, MD, Assistant Professor
Dr. Huneycutt recently joined the UK faculty and is working at Kentucky Clinic North.

Alison Iser, MD, Assistant Professor
Dr. Iser completed her faculty development fellowship with the University of Kentucky and is working at Kentucky Clinic North. Her interests include women’s health, adolescent medicine, and medical education.

Jennifer M. Joyce, MD, Assistant Professor, Director of Predoctoral Education
Dr. Joyce is interested in obstetrical care in family medicine as well as access to care by underserved populations. At the invitation of the U.S. Embassy in Lao, she visited Lao in 2001 to speak on maternal and child health issues. As Director of the third-year Family Practice clerkship, she is currently evaluating its impact on students’ appreciation of the role of the family in primary care medicine and their knowledge of the genogram as a tool. She currently receives support for research activities from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) through a Building Research Infrastructure and Capacity (BRIC) grant awarded to the UK Center for Health Services Management and Research and the Department of Family Practice. For her BRIC research project is a qualitative study of family physician and patient decision making about cancer screening. She is the Principle Investigator for the department’s three-year “Predoctoral Training in Primary Care” grant from HRSA.

Shersten Killip, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Associate Residency Director
Dr. Killip is funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to conduct a study on patient safety and after-hours telephone medicine. She completed a research project, “Prevalence of Chlamydia Infection,” sponsored by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) through the auspices of the Kentucky Ambulatory Network (KAN). Dr. Killip came to Kentucky after completing her family medicine residency in Connecticut. She then completed her two-year faculty development fellowship in family medicine at UK. Her research interests include quality of care and patient safety, preventive medicine, and effective medical education.

Margaret Miller Love, PhD, Assistant Professor, Director of Research
Dr. Love's research focuses on the delivery of primary health care services. Her current research interests include the role of physician-patient relations in health outcomes, the development and maintenance of continuity of patient care over time, effective interventions to improve access to preventive services, mechanisms by which practitioners can enable social support to improve patient health, and the implementation of primary care practice-based research. She has a Joint Appointment in the College of Public Health and is a Faculty Associate of the Center for Health Services Management and Research. She is the Research Director for the Kentucky Ambulatory Network (KAN), the regional primary care practice-based research network founded in 2000. She is a co-investigator on two of the department’s HRSA training grants: the Academic Administrative Units grant for building research infrastructure and the Faculty Development grant. She is the Co-Principal Investigator on the Building Research Infrastructure and Capacity (BRIC) grant awarded to the UK College of Public Health and the Department of Family Practice by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). She is co-investigator on an AHRQ-funded intervention project to reduce cardiovascular disease risk factors in Type II diabetic patients. Dr. Love is a scholar in the NIH-funded K30 Therapeutics and Translational Research Program at UK, and is conducting a focus group study of asthma patients’ perceptions of their relationships with health care providers.

Samuel C. Matheny, MD, MPH, Professor and Chair
Dr. Matheny’s special interests include health services research, particularly with special populations; HIV/AID and other infectious diseases in primary care; community health; and international medicine. He is the President of the Association of Departments of Family Medicine. He is the Program Director for the department’s Academic Administrative Units training grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) for building research infrastructure, primarily through establishment of the Kentucky Ambulatory Network (KAN). Dr. Matheny is providing regional leadership in efforts to build a statewide database tracking graduates of Kentucky family medicine residency programs, and enabling comparisons across states in outcomes of residency training (e.g., service in rural and medically underserved areas).

Kevin A. Pearce, MD, MPH, Associate Professor, Vice Chair for Academic Affairs
Dr. Pearce's special teaching interests include clinical epidemiology and evidence-based medicine. He is actively involved with the education of students, residents and fellows. He is a faculty associate in the UK Center for Health Services Management and Research and holds joint faculty appointments in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Environmental Health and the School of Public Health. He is the director of the UK Family Medicine Faculty Development Program, and Principal Investigator for the department’s HRSA-funded Faculty Development training grant. His research has revolved around his special interest in the prevention of cardiovascular disease. He is the Principal Investigator on a large research proposal newly funded by the federal Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHRQ) entitled “Cardiovascular Risk Education and Social Support” (CaRESS). The intervention project will attempt to reduce cardiovascular disease risk factors in Type II diabetic patients through mobilizing their existing social support. Dr. Pearce is now fostering the development of a primary care practice-based research network (PBRN). He is the Director of the Kentucky Ambulatory Network (KAN), the regional primary care PBRN founded in 2000. He was the PI on an AHRQ grant to study and improve the KAN informatics infrastructure. He is a co-investigator on the department’s HRSA Academic Administrative Units training grant for building research infrastructure and the department’s Residency training grant.

Richard Rodenberg, MD, Assistant Professor, Associate Director of Sports Medicine
Dr. Rodenberg is double boarded in Pediatrics and Internal Medicine, and brings his interests in family medicine and sports medicine to the University of Kentucky.

F. Douglas Scutchfield, MD, Professor, Peter P. Bosomworth Professor of Health Services Research and Policy
His major areas of research are public health practice and administration, managed care, and preventive services, all areas in which he has published widely. He is Editor of the Journal of Preventive Medicine and of several textbooks in public health.

A. Stevens Wrightson, MD, Assistant Professor, Residency Director
Dr. Wrightson is interested in residency education evaluation and research in obstetrical practice in family medicine. His current research projects include a study of gender-based differences in residents’ obstetrical and gynecological training experiences. He currently receives support for research activities from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) through a Building Research Infrastructure and Capacity (BRIC) grant awarded to the UK Center for Health Services Management and Research and the Department of Family Practice. His BRIC research project studies preconception care in the Kentucky Ambulatory Network (KAN). He is also involved in collaborative education and research grants with the College of Dentistry.

Elizabeth H. Young, DrPH, Associate Professor
Dr. Young’s research and clinical interests are in health risk appraisal, risk reduction, and the role of the family in supporting positive health behaviors. Dr. Young and Dr. Elder collaborate in the development and implementation of the department’s behavioral science residency training